


Flowery Hearts

by Unicorn (Jensee)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Also I think we're entered the realm of, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Amnosia, Arum is very much still a lizard, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I know nothing about how campuses actually work I'm sorry, Kinda, M/M, Multi, Other, Second Citadel (Penumbra Podcast), Slow Burn, The Penumbra Podcast Secret Santa 2018, What's new, because i have no self-control, more background characters to come, yes this is both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-09-27 14:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17163827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jensee/pseuds/Unicorn
Summary: There are not enough words in the universe to fully explain love. Damien tries and fails as life throws unexpected difficulties in his way.Arum has faced loneliness his whole life. To think this would change would be a mistake he's not ready to make.The world makes sense until it doesn't. There is always something to understand, a mystery to solve, and Rilla never backed down from a challenge before.Secret santa for @rby7 on tumblr





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pavonineperformer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pavonineperformer/gifts).



> Gift for the The penumbra secret santa 2018! I don't know yet if the person I'm doing it for has a AO3 or what it is so this will be linked on my tumblr to them, until I have more definite info.
> 
> Technically I'm not late yet! But I will be because this fic imploded and it's problably gonna be around 15k...? I don't know if I should apologize or not.  
> Anyway, I'm trying to post this whole thing before the 1rst. I think I can do it. I'm going to try and post a chapter every two days so I live myself a bit of time to actually write and edit without posting.
> 
> I wanted to go a bit farther for this chapter, but I'm probably gonna add a scene (because that's what happens when your plot develops mid-writing) at the beginning of the next one so I'm gonna have to, you know, write it.
> 
> I'm very sorry about that summary, I panicked. I'll try to fix it when my brains comes back.  
> I'm very happy about the title for once tho! I hope you like it too <3

Damien rubbed anxiously at his wrist as he waited from the seatbelt sign to turn off. It could have been his imagination - surely it was his imagination - but it looked like the amaryllis flower on it was beginning to fade, its colors drained, and greyer that they had been this morning.  
Surely it meant nothing, and Damien was probably imagining this anyway, but did that mean Rilla was sick? Did that mean something had happened to her while he was in the air? What if it meant she didn’t love him anymore, what if it meant he had annoyed her, and she had moved on, finally deciding he wasn’t worth the effort anyway, since it seemed he had some other soulmates after her, anyway?

Maybe – Damien’s breathing stopped – maybe she’d been in an accident. Maybe she’d walked in front of a car, engrossed as she was in her wonderful ideas, and maybe she was… maybe she was…

“Sir? Are you alright?”

Damien let out a startled yelp, and the air hostess took a slight step back, looking worried.

“I… Yes! I’m sorry! So sorry! I was… Can we leave the plane?”

“Ah, yes of course. Are you sure…?”

“Yes! Fine! I am fine! Sorry for the inconvenience!”

Damien did his best to stay polite as he leapt off the plane as quickly as possible. It was stupid, really. If Rilla had had any kind of accident, he would have felt it, wouldn’t he? He rubbed at his wrist as he waited for the security check, trying not to look at it. He didn’t want to see the other flowers there. Didn’t want to see if they had bloomed, if they had robbed him of his precious, wonderful Amaryllis, his Rilla.  
_Surely_ she was fine. She _was_! She had to be fine! Damien didn’t know what he would do if she wasn’t fine.

“Damien!”

She was there! She was fine! Her hair were braided like fine, dark wool and her smile was like the sun coming up after the year’s solstice. She moved like warm waters, coiling an uncoiling in a hypnotic, sensuous dance, and soon enough, she reached him, beautiful and perfect.

“Rilla!”

“Damien, _breathe_ , I’m here.” She was saying in her musical tones, and her hand was in his; her petite, dexterous hand.

“Rilla.” he obeyed, amazed at her sight, like he’d been the first time he’d felt the flower bloom on his wrist. She’d been like a revelation, like the reason for Damien’s whole existence, a target for all the words he’d learnt, all the words he’d woven together all these years, wishing on flowers and hoping he’d provide enough water for it to breath into life on his skin. He was so ready to tell her, to make their bond, already visible through the marks on both their skins, tangible, a reality nobody could miss. And yet.  
His wrist refused to let him be entirely Rilla’s. Despite everything, his wrist seemed to want for him to split himself in three, for his soul to be bound not only to her, but to some other flowers that would steal Rilla’s air and water. How could that be? when Damien knew deep within his heart than he was _nothing_ but _Rilla’s…_ When he was, for all intent and purpose, ready to surrender his _whole being_ …

“Damien? Earth to Damien?”

Damien blinked.

“Right! I’m sorry, I was merely thinking how wonderful your hair are done today! You look… beautiful Rilla.”

She rolled her eyes, but with a smile, and an amused air on her face.

“Sure. I believe you, Sir Poet” she smoothed a hand on his brow, and Damien helplessly leaned into her touch, “Stop worrying, Damien. I’m fine. _You’re_ fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Ah… yes. I’m sorry.”

“Did you have a nice trip? How are your parents?”

Damien launched into a retelling of the vacation he’d spent away from her, even though he had been sure to recount to her everything everyday when he’d been there. She didn’t seem to mind, taking his hand in hers and leading him out of the airport. When Damien stopped talking, they had almost reached his dorms, and Rilla was looking for a place to park her car in the student parking lot.

“But enough of me. I’m sure you’ve had incredible adventures while I was away! Maybe you could recount them to me?”

The convoluted expression made her smile.

“Well, it’s not like I did much. Between the lab and the bar, I’ve been pretty busy. Oh! I did make a breakthrough on the calendula extract!” Damien listened attentively as he unloaded the car, despite the fact that he barely could understand what she was explaining to him. Apart from poetry and archery, Damien couldn’t pretend to much, and Rilla had a scientific mind he could never hope to equal. He could merely admire the way her eyes brightened when she talked about her experiments, the shape of her mouth as she explained her advancements and what it meant for the future of science; for _her_ future as a scientist.

It should have made Damien sad that she could navigate through such heights he could only be left behind, but instead it made her awe-inspiring, a mysterious beacon of light that he was helplessly dragged toward. There was something so incredible about knowing that her soul extended so far, outwards in so many direction, that Damien could only ever hope to discover her again and again, never reaching the end of her being, and still being allowed to try, to stay by her side.

He wanted to try forever. Surely Rilla would say yes! they were so good together! In a way, their marks already bounded them but Damien wanted their promise to be thought-out, deliberate, outspoken.  
Maybe that would even be enough to wash away the creeping, dead flowers surrounding the amaryllis on his wrist.  
Maybe it wouldn’t be. Maybe Rilla wouldn’t say yes! She had every reason not to, when she could see that Damien’s soul was supposed to abandon her. He wouldn’t! He never would! Couldn’t even think of it! But what if she didn’t believe him? What if it wasn’t enough?! What if he wasn't enough?

Rilla’s hand came to rest on his, startling him out of his panicked thoughts.  
The look she sent him was pointed, but warm, and Damien forced himself to breath as he put down the luggage, heavy from the small box carefully hidden inside it.

“It’s nice to have you back.” Rilla says, stepping into his space.

Her smile was a work of art - her lips fresh like the petal of a flower just bloomed - and it drew Damien in like a bee to its nectar.

“It’s nice to see you” he replied in kind, feeling a little light-headed.

“I missed you” she said, and her hand slipped in his hair, gently pulling him down so he could taste her lips.

 

The forest was calming this time of the year. It wasn’t quite autumn yet, and while the temperature has dropped significantly to become agreeable, the leaves on the trees still looked lush and green for the most part, offering Arum as much shade as light: a perfect atmosphere to think and finish this design he’d been wrestling with for weeks.

Despite everything, Arum couldn’t seem to concentrate. The Second Citadel’s nearby forest wasn’t that different from Titan’s Bloom at first glance, but it was entirely too silent, and its soil was so dry it seemed to him like the earth itself was thirsty for anything entering those woods alive.  
Eerie, was the word, maybe.

While the Second Citadel was set in a pretty diverse area, the number of monsters actually attending the university was much lower than Arum had been expecting. He was the only one in most of his classes, and his four arms got him more frightened glances than friendly smiles.  
Not that, he reasoned, it would have been much better in a monster-dominated school. He refrained himself from rubbing at his chest, and tried to concentrate on his plans again. Creating a treehouse both monster _and_ human friendly was more complicated than he would have thought. Every change he made to try and accommodate the original designs to human’s proclivities seemed to create new problems, and the draft he’d made was starting to look bad enough that he might have to start over.

He was mulling over converting the ladder into a spiral staircase, when a noise disrupted his already fleeting concentration.

There was some scuffling, and a muted noise, like someone half-heartedly hitting a tree trunk, and the muffled sounds of muttered words, that even Arum’s sharp hearing couldn’t quite pick up. It seemed like someone was wandering aimlessly into the forest and muttering to themselves all the while. From the sound of their voice, and the rather clumsy way they were trading through the trees, it seemed to be a human, which was somewhat surprising. In the two months Arum had spent in the Second Citadel, rarely had he been disturbed while trying to work amongst the trees, and never by a human, despite their overwhelming majority on campus.  
He contorted himself a bit - careful not to drop his notepad and pencil - to try and catch a glimpse of the source of the noise. The human didn’t seem to notice Arum perched up high a few meters away from him, and, out of idle curiosity, Arum strained his hearing to try and catch a glimpse of what he was saying.

He seemed to be muttering to himself, a litany of half-whispered words that he sometimes shook his head at, or that brought a smile to his lips. But then, inevitably, he would frown, and tap the nearest tree trunk with the palm of his hand, stopping for an instant his frantic pacing before taking a breath, and resuming both the muttering and the pacing.  
His face was incredibly expressive, and despite Arum’s own limited experience in discerning human’s feeling, he could ascertain that the man was getting increasingly frustrated, seemingly with his own words. It didn’t seem like he was getting anywhere.

Arum realized he’d been staring for what must have been a full minute, which was just ridiculous. This human was not only distracting him, if he was so kind as to _leave the trees alone_.  
He was about to scowl the stranger for his disrupting – and frankly disrespectful – behavior when the man took another breath, before declaiming words that shot through Arum’s ears like the sharp impact of an arrow head.

 _There are so many flowers in the world, and yet, I found_ you

Arum nearly fell off the tree.

He managed to catch himself in time, but his favorite pencil escaped his grasp, clattering loudly against the roots of the tree before rolling noisily onto the ground.

The human turned around at the sound, and Arum found himself looking straight into his eyes. The words on his skin burned.

“What are you doing _here_?” His voice had turned squeaky, like a little scared animal, and Arum couldn’t help but find it somewhat endearing.

“I was studying.” Arum said, and he could feel the human speech rattle and hiss in ways it wasn’t meant to, ultra-conscious of every syllable as they made their way out of his mouth.  
But the human didn’t seem to react.

“Studying?! In a _tree_?” the human sounded indignant now, but he picked Arum’s pencil up as he reached the ground, and gently extended a hand to give it back to him. “Who would study up in a tree?”

Arum gave him a flat stare.

“Not humans, I would imagine.”

“Oh.” The human was smaller than him, like most human were, and he had to turn his head up to look into Arum’s eyes. He looked agitated still, and his cheeks were a bit red, which seemed strange to Arum: as far as he could tell, this human hadn’t exerted himself enough for it, but maybe it was the response to a biological mechanism he wasn’t aware of. “No. I suppose not.”

His hand brushed against Arum’s as he deposited the pencil in it and he had to restrain himself from shivering when the words on his chest tingled with heat in response. The human didn’t seem to notice, but, as if it was an automatic response, his hand quickly retreated to rub at his opposite wrist. Arum could catch a glimpse of color before he spoke again.

“And what are you studying, my lizard friend? This forest does seem like quite the venue if one wishes to be at peace as they work."

Arum blinked. That was… a lot of words for a fairly simple question.

“Architecture.”

“Oh, this sounds wonderful! To create for the body so that the soul can rest… that is remarkable! Were you imagining a design specific for this forest?”

“Um." Arum hesitated for an instant, not used to sharing his work. But the mark on his chest burned, and the words fell out of his lips, almost  unexpectedly, "Not for this one, but I did think of a forest.” The human didn’t seem to have an immediate response for that, so Arum fumbled for something else to say “Do you… want to see it?”

It seemed to be the right move, because the stranger’s eyes brightened, and he said something about the beauty of art before beginning to scrutinize Arum’s drafts.

“This looks beautiful! And so perfectly in tune with that _tree_! Such harmony between nature and technology!”

Arum’s frills fluttered in flattered embarrassment, and he hoped it wasn’t too obvious as he tried to stop the flow of compliments.

“Do you know architecture?”

“Not at all!” The human beamed with a disarming honesty. “A beautiful design transcends subjects, if I may say so, but I am, myself, only armed with words!” The torrent that followed lost Arum pretty quickly. Not only was the delivery a touch too quick for him to process, but the effort he usually would have made to keep up was impaired by the fascinating way the human’s face seemed to illuminate as he jumped from syllables to syllables with delight, his short curls bouncing as he moved, entranced, it seemed, by the very words he was pronouncing. Arum wasn’t too much of one for metaphors, but this human’s almost manic energy, the way he seemed to radiate light… it reminded him of the excited flowers coming out of the soil too soon for their own good, delighted by the sun’s return and eager to extend their petals towards it. “That is to say, I… study literature.” The human finally concluded, looking… sheepish maybe? Arum had never been very good at telling human’s emotions apart.

“Would that be why you talk so… profusely, honeysuckle?”

The human looked as if he was about to retort, when his grin suddenly faltered.

“What… what did you just say?” His voice was suddenly squeaky again, like a little mouse in front of a large cat.

“I… it was just… you didn’t tell me your name!”

Arum hoped he hadn’t somehow managed to insult the human. He looked very pale.

“No… no… what was the word you used?”

He wondered if maybe the flower was the symbol etched into the human’s wrist. Arum suddenly realized how close they were to one another.

“Honeysuckle?” he whispered, a long inhale of vowels and hisses, a word in between world.

His soulmate’s eyes widened.

And suddenly Arum was pushed backwards, almost tumbling in the dirt.

“No!” said the human, looking horrified.

“What?” Arum scrambled against the tree behind him, trying to go to his soulmate. But the human wasn’t looking at him, but at his wrist, a look of terror on his face.

Arum’s heart sank in his chest.

“I… I’m sorry.” The human looked at him just long enough to shove his draft in his chest. “I… I need to go.” He scrambled backwards, so eager to flee that he almost tripped on a root.

Arum didn’t try to follow him.

Of course.

Monsters didn’t have soulmates.

 

Damien clutched at his wrist, trying desperately to calm his breathing as he finally stopped on the slope separating the campus from the forest. He could only watch as the flowers surrounding the amaryllis on his skin filled with colors and slowly began unfurling, their dried petals blooming for the first time.

Why was there two of them? More importantly, why now? Had this lizard done something to him? Had Damien done something?! Was Rilla injured? Had something happened to her?!  
A wave of panic crashed down on Damien. He had to make sure she was alright! He had to make sure nothing had happened to her!

He scrambled for his old, battered phone, struggling to put in Rilla’s contact, and trembling as he put the phone to his ear.

“Damien?” Her voice came tiny and deformed through the phone, but she didn’t seem to be in any kind of distress.

“Rilla!” he gasped breathlessly.

“Yes? Damien, are you okay?”

“I… Of course! I… I just wanted to make sure everything was alright!”

“Damien, _breathe_.” Rilla said, and Damien drew in a lungful of fresh air, grateful for the reminder. “Why wouldn’t I be alright? Did something happen?”

“I just… I just…” Damien’s eyes fell on his wrist once more. The honeysuckle and arum lily on it were still filling with colors, looking somewhat less vibrant and healthy than the amaryllis was. What would Rilla think? Would she think he had betrayed her? That he was ready to move on, to _abandon_ her? He wasn’t! He loved her! She was his sun, his water, the air in his lungs! “I… I love you Rilla.”

“I love you too, Damien.” His heart felt so full he was sure it might crack open any minute now. “Listen, I’ve got to go, but come by after work, okay?”

“I… Yes! Okay”

“See you soon.”

Damien slowly lowered the phone, his hand automatically coming to cover his own wrist, fruitlessly covering the mark betraying his treacherous heart.  
He remembered the words coming out of that lizard’s mouth, like the whisper of leaves as they left a tree. How the sound had rolled out of his strange, monstrous tongue directly into Damien heart, finding an echo on his burning wrist.

What was he going to do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! You made it! I couldn't edit as much as I wanted to, because well, I do celebrate christmas and I did it twice in two days (I know) so if you see any glaring errors (And shit I really hope you don't) please don't hesitate to tell me.  
> I might manage a cute fic thats screams holidays cheer more obviously but for now you're getting fluff and angst.
> 
> Please feel free to yell at me and cheer me on as I try to finish this in record time, cause I greatly appreciate it and I'm incredibly terrified of it being inappropriate for the even but I still wanna do it (I'm invested damn it). You can scream at me on tumblr or on twitter (Im branching out can you believe) at @oneunicornaway on both case, where you can find me complaining about how writing is hard.
> 
> There is always more thing to say but I'm gonna stop the word vomit for now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rilla meets Arum and Damien reaches a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is not quite late but it's not super early either... In my defense my doc has been looming over me like a bad cloud all day and I kept going back and forth between adding, deleting a scene... Suffice to say I'm probably going to try and make some cuts once I'm done with the whole thing. We'll see how that's handled in terms of publication then...

“Are you okay, Damien?” Rilla asked, a little frown on her face.

“Yes! I’m fine! Why wouldn’t I be fine?!”

She threw him a look.

“You’ve been jittery all evening. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?”

Damien didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed or horrified. He _knew_ he was a terrible liar. But he couldn’t have Rilla know what had happened! She would think he’d betrayed her! She would be hurt, she would leave him! Just because of a stupid mark, and of a lizard monster who loved architecture and had keen, deep violet eyes.

Rilla touched his hand, interrupting the furious flow of his thoughts. She pulled him closer to her, gently.

“Is it about your soulmark?”

Damien jumped, getting away from her before she could see the blooming flowers on his wrist.

“No!”

The violent rejection seemed to surprise Rilla, and Damien immediately scrambled to get a hang of the situation.

“Rilla, I’m so sorry! I… it’s just…” his shoulders dropped. It was useless. Destiny had doomed them anyway, hadn’t it? “Yes.”

“Hey, hey Damien, it’s okay.” Rilla, sweet Rilla took his cheek in her hand, taking his other hand back while pointedly looking into his eyes. “You don’t need to worry.” She brushed away the tears that were flowing freely on Damien’s cheeks. “I know we’ve found each other with our soulmarks, but really, the science behind it is hazy at best. Maybe this doesn’t mean anything; maybe you and they are not even romantic soulmates! It does happen sometimes.”

“But…”

“I know you’re worried about what it means for me, but _I’m_ not.” She held his eyes with her honest, strong stare. “ _Nothing_ will happen to me. I won’t let it. And I know you won’t, either.”

“I won’t.” Damien whispered, and let his head fall on her shoulder, unable to face her eyes any longer. She deserved so much. So much more than what Damien could ever hope to…

“I love you, Damien.”

When his breaths had calmed down, Rilla let him go slowly, taking a firm hold of his hand.

“Come on. Would you like to accompany me to the greenhouse? I’ve been growing some calendulas for my research and I want to check up on them.”

Damien, still a bit light-headed, dumbly nodded. He followed her as she led him toward the greenhouse, one in a series of places reserved for the students in botany and biology. Damien usually liked the place: when it wasn’t overflowing with students talking in a language he had little hope to understand, it was a calm place filled with sweet scents and colorful plants.  
It was beautiful, and Damien liked listening to Rilla as she made her measurements and analyses out loud, accepting him into her space naturally, organically - letting him see a side of her that was just hers and yet that she accepted him to intrude into.

Damien looked around the greenhouse while Rilla watered the corner reserved to her own plants. He wandered a bit headlessly, looking at the flowers without seeing them until he realized he was standing right in front of a batch of arum lilies.  
Without needing to check, Damien could see that one of the flowers was a perfect replica of the one quietly sitting on his wrist, silently pushing its treacherous roots into his bloodstream, siphoning his tranquility to bloom strong and beautiful like a proof of his failings.  
Its scent wafted up to him. And while the rational part of Damien’s brain knew it simply couldn't be that strong, it still felt as if the smell was smothering him.

“There you are! I swear to the saints I will lose you in here one day!” Damien turned around, seeing Rilla coming up to him, lightly dusting off dirt off her fingers. “Oh! Amaryllises!”

Surprised, Damien looked back at the flowers behind him, realizing that there was in fact a batch of amaryllis flowers right beside the lilies. Rilla gently ran a finger up one of their petals.

“Yes! They… smell good, don’t they?” Damien blurted out.

Rilla arched an eyebrow at him but didn’t comment, approaching her nose to the flower in a show of smelling them, a slight frown on her face.

“Do they? I can’t tell.”

“Oh! Oh Rilla, I forgot, I’m so so…”

She held up a hand to stop him.

“It’s okay Damien. I don’t care all that much.”

“But…”

“Nope. I’m fine.” She took his hand gently, raising it to her lips in an imitation of what Damien would do, making heat come up to his cheeks. “Let’s get out of here.”

 

Rilla had to work early the following morning so Damien didn’t have to make an excuse to leave her for the night after a kiss that left his head swimming.

She didn’t ask again about his soulmark, and Damien was too much of a coward to tell her outright about his encounter in the wood. In the end, he was left alone with storming thoughts in his head and blooming flowers on his wrist. He could barely bare to look at them and yet he couldn’t keep his eyes away.

They didn’t look as healthy and bright as the amaryllis flower who accompanied them. Damien couldn’t help but be reminded of the words coming out the lizard’s mouth. “Honeysuckle”. It had sounded both achingly familiar, something that had followed Damien his whole life, and incredibly foreign, pronounced with far too many hisses, a sound morphed into something strange, monstrous.  
_Honeysuckle._ The corresponding flower gave a responding pulse to his thoughts, but even the flash of brightness wasn’t enough, and it stayed somewhat lumpy, sad looking. The arum lily besides it didn’t look much better, and Damien only felt guiltier looking at them.  
This lizard boy, a bit gruff but nice, passionate with architecture, had looked surprised when Damien had pushed away from him, maybe even hurt. He’d had beautiful, violet eyes. Violet eyes that for an instant had looked deep within Damien’s…

His wrist throbbed again and Damien shook his head. He couldn’t! He couldn’t do it! He couldn’t betray Rilla like that. Maybe that boy was his soulmate, maybe he wasn’t: none of it mattered.  
Rilla.  
_Rilla_ was his soulmate and he couldn’t stand to lose her; couldn’t stand the idea of the amaryllis on his skin faltering and losing its petals, couldn’t stand the idea of watching it shiver and die because of Damien’s treacherous heart. He couldn’t let it.  
He wouldn’t.

When Damien finally fell into a fitful sleep, clutching his wrist to hide the mess of colors on it, he dreamt of violet eyes and flowers.

 

* * *

 

Rilla stared at her phone worryingly. It wasn’t like Damien not to answer her texts. Usually, as soon as she sent them, she could expect him to weave words in less than a minute to answer, almost always in an impressively convoluted manner. She had more than one poem saved in her phone from Damien’s responses to perfectly mundane thing. But in the last few days, while she had hoped to catch up with him before the term resumed, he’d been uncharacteristically silent, only offering a rather short response to say he was busy with a late paper. She was sure he was absolutely torturing himself over it, but it was rare for him to cut even her off.

The teacher entered the classroom, presenting himself and the class' subject quickly before getting into the material, and Rilla pushed the thoughts aside. Damien had managed long before he met her, it stood to reason he would not always ask her for her help when he needed something. And if he kept up with this unusual isolation, she would just have to get Angelo to talk to him.

Soon enough, she was fully concentrated on the class, filling away information and trying to apply it to her own research. Biology class seemed to be, by far, the most interesting class she had yet, and that new teacher surely knew what he was talking about.  
The period flew by, and soon enough professor Demaggio was announcing the first assignment, a group project to present in a month.

Rilla scanned the class with a frown. As excepted, all the other students were already talking excitedly between one another, sharing ideas and quickly forming groups with the friends they had made over the years. Meanwhile, the emptiness around Rilla’s seat seemed almost pointed. She had never bothered to make friends with the other students of the Second Citadel, concentrating on her research - never quite ready to expose herself to their scorn before her second-hand clothes and her general lack of… well most things rich city kids tended to have. If it hadn’t been for Damien, she was pretty sure she would still spend most of her nights completely alone, satisfying herself with drawings of plant anatomy and the occasional meet up with Marc and Talfryn.

“Excuse me?”

Rilla turned around, her head immediately going up.

 _Tall_ , was her first thought, before she noticed the four arms and the very blatantly non-human skin.  
Uh.

“We should make a group together. There is no one left.”

She would have been offended at what sounded almost like an order, but her brain caught on the fact that the words were awkwardly said, not only because it seemed the mouth of the monster before her wanted to make hisses out of every sounds, but also because, despite being a good head taller than her, he still looked at her warily, from the corner of his eyes, as if he was worried she would chug acid at his face.

“Oh. Uh, sure.”

They looked at each other for a second in awkward silence. A fair number of monsters lived on the outskirts of town, which Rilla knew well, but she never had much of an opportunity to actually talk to one. Even if, officially, there was no separation between humans and monsters anymore, no one seemed especially keen to mingle, especially on the monsters’ side. Rilla couldn’t blame them, considering the history still standing like a fresh, open wound, between the two communities.

He looked eerily handsome, in this otherworldly way that was kind of a given considering his extra limbs and his burnished, smooth scales.

“And… What’s your name?” Rilla finally said, because it didn’t seem like he would be the one to break the silence between them.

He blinked, as if the question was entirely unexpected.

“Arum” his voice was deep, in a gravely sort of way.

“Well, Arum. Nice to meet you. I’m Rilla.” She would have extended a hand, but considering the way his two sets of shoulders were hunched, and the tight grip he had on his messenger bag, she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t just flee if she so much as moved toward him. “So, what do you want to study?” she said instead.

He seemed to relax at that, beginning to talk about his interest in plants, and as he launched into an explanation about why he felt there was a lot of exploration left in human science, she authorized herself a smile. Maybe she was on her way to make a new friend after all.

 

Behind the wariness and the general closed off exterior, Arum was, Rilla discovered, grumpy, arrogant, and had very set ideas about human’s science: its lacking, specifically.

“…but they don’t take into account the longing of the plants!”

Rilla had to laugh at the absolute indignation in Arum’s voice.

“What?” he hissed immediately. His scaled skin couldn’t blush, but Rilla suspected the way his frills fluttered were his way of showing embarrassment.

“I’m not making fun of you!” she tried to reassure him, her smile still deforming her face “It’s just nice to see someone so passionate about their subject.”

Arum huffed, his frills flaring behind his head. Like this, he looked like a small, disgruntled dragon.

“So would that be what you want to work about? Something like… how the plants’ longings… will affect their biology?”

Arum looked blankly at her.

“The subject. For our class?”

“Right.” Arum’s voice was soft, and maybe Rilla was reaching into this, but it seemed like he was pleasantly surprised, like she was, to have had a conversation with a lab partner, up to the point that they’d forgotten about their actual assignment. “Would that… would you be okay with that?”

 

Somehow, despite everything, Arum had managed, it seemed, to make… a tentative friend. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to make a group assignment since he was in the second Citadel, but it _was_ the first time he’d successfully integrated any kind of group. Most humans took one look at him, smiled in a way that, even to him, looked forced and awkward, and then quickly turned tails to try and find some other group they could get into to avoid him as much as they could.  
Maybe it was because she was as much of a loner as she seemed to be, maybe it was because Rilla really didn’t care about the still gaping void between humans and monsters, but she hadn’t recoiled when she’d seen him, had even smiled at him when he’d tentatively proposed her to share the work on this project.

She seemed nice, and smart, which was more than Arum expected from most human, and when they exchanged ideas she would both listen to him and stand her grounds with interesting arguments. Overall, it felt like she would be someone he’d enjoy working with.

Arum could practically hear his Keep trying to get him to try and be her friend, but that would just be unrealistic of her. Humans and monsters weren’t friends: they had proven that over the years. The fact that they had reached a tentative peace as of late didn’t prove much in his opinion considering the state of supposedly shared academics.

And if he had had any doubt before, the look on the other human’s face when he’d realized they were…  
Nothing. They were nothing.  
It didn’t matter that the words circling his ribs had been throbbing with a dull pain all week. With any chance, it meant they were fading, and Arum would be able to come back into Titan’s Bloom without his Keep nagging him to find his “soulmate”.

“See you next week, then?” Rilla was smiling at him, gently, over her open notebook, her notes clean and precise in a way Arum couldn’t ever hope to achieve.

“Okay.”

And, without waiting for an answer, or for her to try and shake his hand, he made his exit, willing himself not to look back and see if she cared at all.

She was nice, sure, but she also was human.  
Arum wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

 

* * *

 

Out of all the patrons that were hogging the counter right now, Damien was the most slumped of all, and Angelo knew for a fact he hadn’t drank a lick of alcohol.

“Damien.”

The sound coming out of his best friend’s mouth was not quite discernable enough for Angelo to parse, but it definitely didn’t sound good.

“My friend? Do you need to speak your heart? It seems like it might help.”

Damien’s whine only intensified. Caroline, from behind Angelo, muttered something derogatory, but reassuring his best friend was a priority over correcting her. Even if Damien _was_ maybe being a bit dramatic about it all.

“If he makes a scene, I will have to throw him out, Angelo. You better take care of him before he starts reciting poetry again.”

“Right!” Caroline was right – They couldn’t inconvenience the other patrons with too much commotion! “Damien! Speak your heart and maybe we can solve your problem!” – Caroline coughed in what seemed to be a very pointed way – “But maybe… not here?”

Damien lifted his head slightly as Angelo put a comforting hand on his shoulder: as was to be expected, his cheeks were streaked with tears.

“Ugh! Just take your break and get _him_ away from me!”

“Thank you, Caroline! I _will_ do that.”

She muttered something he couldn’t hear before managing to tow Damien, who went without resisting.

“So. Damien. Please tell me what haunts you!” Angelo rounded on Damien as soon as they stepped out on the empty street behind the bar. “Surely it can’t be too bad a predicament!”

“I…” Damien’s eyes filled with tears again, but he could manage to utter a single word before his emotion got the better of him “Rilla!”

Angelo gently patted his shoulder. Damien just had to get it out of him sometimes.

“Did something happen?” A thought suddenly occurred to him “She isn’t _injured_ , is she?”

“What? No!” That, at least, seemed to bring Damien out of his tears, but only for him to look worried instead, a crease forming between his brows. “Why would she… But what if she _is_?! Angelo, do you think she’s hurt?!”

“I’m sure she’s fine!”

“Yes! There’s no reason for her not to be, right?”

“Right!”

“Right!”

Damien’s hand went to his wrist, as it always did when he was feeling nervous. He seemed to notice the gesture himself and stopped it before it could actually reach his sleeve.

“Is Rilla the cause of your concern?”

“What? No!”

“Alright then! Pray tell, what is it then? Speak your heart my friend!”

Damien looked at him for an instant. Then back at his wrist.

“I… Do you think monster can have soulmarks, Angelo?”

“Of course not! Only human have them!”

Damien looked agitated at that.

“But what if…”

“Damien, what nonsense are you talking? Of _course_ monsters don’t have soulmarks! We don’t even know if they have souls at all! That was the reason of our long-standing divide, after all. I can’t imagine you’d have forgotten!”

“But I…”

“Why are you so concerned with monsters, my friend? Are you worried a monster is about to commit some crime?”

“What? No!” Damien’s surprised expression changed quickly, and the crease on his brow grew deeper than ever. “No! But she… but he’s… Rilla!”

“Rilla? Did a monster attack her?

Damien’s eyes were wide and panicked, it didn’t seem like talking had been enough to grant him his tranquility.

“No! No monster! He wouldn’t, he can’t!”

Angelo patting his shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting manner.

“Of course not, my friend! This monster of yours couldn’t get to Rilla while you’re there, could he? And Rilla herself is far from a distressed maiden herself, isn’t she? I see no reason why you should be so worried!”

Damien’s expression changed, but he hardly looked any better. His mouth moved almost soundlessly, and only a few words could travel to Angelo’s ears.

“But he can’t… _he can’t_ … and _Rilla!_ Of course!... a mistake!”

“Is your heart alleviated at all, my friend? You still seem quite shaken.”

“Angelo!” Damien seemed to have forgotten he was there at all. Angelo didn’t take offense, he knew how much Damien’s heart could trouble him. “I… I… please forgive me, I…”

“It’s quite fine, my friend! Only I need to go back to my shift. Caroline insists I don’t take too long breaks.”

“Right! Of course!”

“Don’t worry too much, my friend! I’m sure whatever it is, is not as dire as you mind makes it out to be.”

Damien barked a short laugh at that, looking somewhat relieved of his burden.

“Thank you, Angelo.”

Angelo gave him a little salute before back to his work, satisfied with the help he’d been able to provide for his friend.

  

Damien felt unsettled, almost feverish. Of course! How could he have forgotten?! Monsters _didn’t_ have soulmarks. That was the whole point; the whole reason they _were_ monsters. It was ridiculous, ludicrous, even, to even imagine that lizard boy had anything to do with the way his wrist had been burning and blooming. Rilla was his only soulmate! There was no other way! His mark was just reacting now because… because they were ready to go further into their relationship! That was it! That had to be it! To have thought otherwise had been foolish of Damien’s heart.

And this lizard, with his eyes, his violet eyes… Surely that had been a fluke! A mistake! Maybe even a trick! Damien wasn’t one to believe rumors, but maybe not all of them were entirely unfounded? Maybe monsters _were_ naturally underhanded, and maybe not only was this lizard not his soulmate… maybe he’d tried to trick him! But what for? What could he possibly want with Damien? He was just a tentative poet and archer…

But what if he was in fact after Rilla? Angelo had misunderstood what he was saying but… No… that was ridiculous! Why would he be?  
But, what if he was? What if the monster had some nefarious plans involving her?

There was some nagging voice on the back of Damien’s brain, that sounded suspiciously like Rilla, telling him to slow down, that maybe he wasn’t entirely rational, that maybe he should take in a bit more air, and Damien forced himself to relax minutely, to breath slowly in and out.

It was all ridiculous, wasn’t it? Just a fluke. It’s not like he had any chance of seeing this lizard again, anyway, now, had he? It didn’t matter that he’d seemed passionate and proud of his work and that his eyes had this specific shade of violet that made them all the more intense, because Damien wasn’t ever going to see him again, was he?

He made an effort to breath, in and out, carefully sitting down on the grassy slope in front of which he’d been pacing for several minutes now. He was fine!  
Rilla was… probably fine.

A pang of guilt settled in his stomach. He’d been too much of a coward to correctly respond to her this past week, worried that she might guess what was happening to his soulmark thanks to this uncanny sense of her.  
Damien couldn’t help but unravel before her, unfolding his very soul in front of her, in the hope that she might appreciate even the tiniest bit of it and accept to stay by his side, just a bit longer. Would she, still, if she saw Damien’s wrist now?

Almost against his own volition, his eyes strayed toward it, pushing up the long sleeve he’d been careful to wear all week. The amaryllis flower in the middle of the small bouquet still stood proudly, but its colors were a bit faded, and the two flowers around it looked a bit withered. The honeysuckle especially, was flagging sadly, looking almost ready to drop. The arum lily didn’t look much better, and the sight made Damien’s heart stutter, a feeling of guilt and dread clogging the back of his throat without him really knowing why.

He didn’t know what this meant, not exactly, but it felt like his fault somehow.

He needed to call Rilla, to talk to her. He couldn’t keep this from her, and she would be the only one able to reassure him, to show him a path. But then… but then…  
Damien’s phone was in his hand, his finger hovering over her contact, but the space between his thumb and the screen seemed impossible to breach, no matter how much his mind balked at the inaction.  
Rilla was probably at work at this hour, Damien rationalized, or working on her project! She wouldn’t want to be disrupted when she was so occupied. And besides, it wouldn’t be fair of him to engage this kind of conversation over the phone. He’d have to be in front of her, to be able to show her is wrist if he wanted to tell her about his concerns.

Damien groaned, very tempted to just lie down in the grass and to stay here, in front of the gaping forest, letting himself be wrapped in shadows as the night slowly fell over the Second Citadel, ignoring the small twinge in his wrist and the giant, terrifying gap in his heart.

Any other day, he would have tried to write poetry about it, to cleanse his heart and mind through rhythmic stances and melodious phrasing, but recently, his words had the disturbing tendency of forming lizard shaped sentences, tracing the phantom shape of two many arms and disconcerting, violet eyes, and Damien had already a lot more scratched out poems stuffed at the very bottom of his desk drawer than he was willing to admit.

He’d spent too many fruitless nights cursing the lines on his wrist, so this time, he just closed his eyes, and hoped this moment too, would pass.

This was all a fluke.  
Just a fluke.

 

“Are you… okay?”

Damien froze at hearing the voice. Too deep, too raspy to be quite human.

“Oh. It’s you.”

The night was starting to fall, so Damien couldn’t see his features very well, but the lizard didn’t seem as friendly as he had when they’d first met. He was standing a few meters away from Damien, and made no move to approach him even as he shuffled awkwardly to his feet. His stance was stiff, two of his arms crossed over his chest, while the other set was clutching his bag and note book close. Damien shivered a bit, the humidity of the grass starting to make him feel the cold autumn air. Didn’t the lizard get cold? The boy in front of him only had some sort of loose tank top that reached down mid tight, accommodating his two sets of arms with enlarged arm holes: he couldn’t have been nearly warm enough.

Damien suddenly realized he hadn’t responded to the lizard’s greeting, only staring at him in silence for what was probably a long minute.

“Um… Hi.” He said awkwardly.

“Do you make a habit of wandering alone in the forest?”

The lizard didn’t sound happy at all to see him, and even Damien could admit to a bit of hypocrisy considering he had just been contemplating never bumping into him as a blessing, but it was a bit grating, and his own words sounded cold and hard.

“Shouldn’t I? It doesn’t seem to bother _you_.”

“No. But I’m a monster. This is what we do, isn’t it? Lurk in the dark.” The remark was biting - with an angry undercurrent that Damien wasn’t willing to inspect right then – and then the lizard’s lips peeled to reveal sharp teeth.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

The lizard huffed, as if Damien had somehow said something funny.

“Maybe you should be.”

Damien scrutinized his face, trying to discern the emotions behind his foreign features. When he took a step towards the lizard, he didn’t quite step back, but Damien didn’t miss the way his feet shuffled awkwardly, and how his already tight grip on his belongings spasmed with tension.

“I don’t think you’d hurt me. Or anyone.”

The boy’s whole head snapped back, almost as if Damien had reached out to try and tap him on the nose.

“You don’t know that.”

Despite his height and his slender, muscular built, the lizard didn’t seem to be able to hold his own in a fight at all. In fact, he was so tense Damien was pretty sure he’d fall over like a plank of wood if Damien so much as grazed him. His eyes were trained on Damien, with a look that was almost familiar among all his strange features. He looked… scared? Hopeful?

“You have human eyes…” the words slipped out of Damien’s mouth, with him barely realizing it.

“I… what?”

“They’re not… They’re…” Damien was very close to the lizard now, he realized, his hand reaching out as if to brush against the scales under the stranger’s eyes, that were looking right into him. If either of them was breathing, Damien couldn’t hear it.

A beeping sound broke the silence abruptly and Damien jumped, almost tripping on his own feet. One of the lizard’s hands shot out of its solid hold around his body to steady Damien, and the touch felt like an electric shot, lighting traveling from the lizard’s fingers to Damien’s wrist.

Damien tore his arm away, suddenly brought back to reality.

What was he doing? Hadn’t he just decided not to care for this lizard? Hadn’t he just decided he’d ignore the way his soulmark was burning his skin, the way his heart felt crazed and hollow. He’d promised, for Rilla. He took in a shuddery breath to try and steady himself.

“I… I should go.”

“Yes. That would be best.” The words were delivered in a long, almost inaudible hiss, and the stranger’s eyes had nothing of the warmth, the humanity Damien thought he’d seen in them, just for an instant.

“Um… I’m Damien, nice to meet you.” He tried extending a hand, letting his brain run on auto-pilot. The lizard looked at it for an instant, not taking it.

“No.” He just said. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Damien was too stunned to respond, and the monster left, simply turning his back to Damien and not looking back.

 

The text, of course, was from Rilla. Damien couldn’t bring himself to open it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angelo is the sweetest of them all and I'm not quite sure we deserve him.
> 
> Next part should be published in two or three days, so on the 30th at latest. I... hope I can be more motivated then because I hae to admit after the rush of the first part (I wrote 12k in three days), I have a bit of a hard time getting back into it...
> 
> I hope everyone is having a lovely time <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my g key has been acting up, so if any g is missing, thats most likely why
> 
> sorry this is late, my life came back full time.
> 
> It's very late when im doing my last readin of this, I hope its okay and not full of mistakes

Rilla, Arum decided, was not only a friendly human and interesting conversationalist, she was also a remarkable scientist. Too bad they couldn’t agree on _methodology_ of all things.

“How can you expect to draw the correct results if you don’t draw your hypothesis first?!”

“Hypothesis brings only a contorted vision of reality! Even you humans should know that you can’t trust a result you expect!”

“But then you just don’t know what to look for!”

“Are you criticizing my experiment?”

“I’m criticizing the fact that nobody could hope to understand your notes!”

“Well, maybe that’s _your_ problem.”

“ _Arum_.”

“ _Rilla_.”

Rilla was the first to break eye contact, chuckling and shaking her head.

“Okay, okay. The fact stands that _I_ really don’t understand how you drew your conclusions. We should prepare the methodology together to be sure to make the same observations.”

Arum had to roll his eyes. Humans and their silly need to control everything.

“Arum…”

“ _Fine_. Let’s completely wrap ourselves in our expectations until nothing is clear to us but our own desires.”

Rilla made a face, probably to make fun of him.

“Don’t sound too overjoyed about it, you big grump.”

Arum grumbled and rolled his eyes countlessly as they drew together a step-by-step of their next experiment, but he couldn’t deny the fact that he was having fun. Making up useless parameters and countless counter-experiments maybe wouldn’t help with the actual science, but it was nice to do with Rilla, who got absorbed in her work, muttering to herself and taking notes, both taking them down on her notebook and recording them on her phone.

“Have you been in the Second Citadel for long?” asked Rilla as they were waiting for their sample to soak properly into the colorant.

Arum hesitated a bit before responding, but Rilla had to realize that he wasn’t that used to humans by now, surely it couldn’t hurt to share a bit.

“Only two months.”

“Oh.” She sounded the same way as she did looking at an interesting test result. Arum tried not to feel too uncomfortable about it. She most likely didn’t mean anything by it. “Where were you before? Do the monsters have the same kind of academic system?”

“They do” - in a manner of speaking: it wasn’t like you could wrangle a lot of monsters into sharing the same cramped space for long, their liberty was much too precious for that - “But I never went there, I studied by myself.”

“Oh, really? That’s impressive. Did you study with your parents?”

Arum shrugged, actively conscious of the fact that he’d picked up the movement from humans, maybe from Rilla herself.

“I don’t have parents. My Keep helped me.”

“Oh.” This time Rilla voice sounded sad. “I’m sorry. I… well, my parents died when I was young. I grew up in an orphanage.”

“Oh.” Arum didn’t know how to respond. That part of Rilla’s history obviously made her sad in a way he couldn’t relate as much as she thought he would. But telling her that would probably be insensitive, wouldn’t it? “I…” He tried to wreck his brain for an appropriate answer. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He wondered if he ought to pat her on the back or embrace her like he’d seen sad humans do to each other, but before he could do anything, the beeping noise indicating it was time to begin the next step on their experiment rang and Rilla sprang from the stool she was sitting on to take care of it.

“It’s okay” she said, looking away from Arum in such a way that he couldn’t see her face. “It was a long time ago.”

It seemed there was nothing else to say, so Arum didn’t, only stayed by her side as he helped with pulling the samples out and examining them under their microscope.  
Eventually Rilla seemed to relax once more, but Arum didn’t forget the incident. No matter what he did, the gap between their two worlds was a reality they couldn’t shake. Seeing his… seeing _Damien_ again had made that very clear for Arum. He always knew he didn’t quite belong to the monster’s world, with the words crawling on his skin, but he’d been foolish to believe he’d be more at home in the humans' part of the world.

Rilla was nice. She was smart, she didn’t back down, and despite their difference, Arum found her beautiful and charming. But she was a world apart. Her and… Damien couldn’t cross the barrier that separated humans and monsters any more than Arum could. Once this project was over, Arum doubted he would see very much of Rilla, and once his semester had come to an end, he wouldn’t have any reason to come back to this side of the forest.

He hadn’t been made for socializing anyway. His Keep and him were more than enough for each other. She’d be disappointed, maybe, but there was no point in staying among the humans for longer that was strictly necessary for Arum’s semester.

 

* * *

 

Rilla wondered what was going through Arum’s mind as she made her way toward the gym. She thought she had managed to get him to trust her somewhat, and he didn’t seem as defensive as he had in the beginning, but as soon as they’d talked about parents, he’d seemed to pull back into himself. He hadn’t seemed particularly sad disclosing the fact that he was an orphan, but she knew better than anyone how easy it was to hide that kind of far-away, scary loss from others, and she wasn’t sure she would have caught it anyway, in the unfamiliar pattern of his expressions.

She’d wanted to try and reassure him, to take him into her arms, or maybe just to take one of his hand into hers, like she did for Damien when his panic took the better of him. But she didn’t think he would have appreciated that. With how closed-off Arum had been in the beginning, Rilla had been careful not to be too familiar with him, worried that it might be too much of an invasion for the lizard.  
Maybe it was rude, among monsters, to touch one another in the way that human found casual? Maybe it even was like those aliens in the series Marc and Talfryn liked so much, where a simple contact of hand was as intimate as a kiss?

She wondered how Arum would react if that was the case and she took his hand. It didn’t seem like he could blush, but she was sure his frills would stutter and flare in surprise, maybe even in pleasure. Maybe he’d even let her get a bit closer, trace his scaly lips with her fingers, maybe get her own lips on the side of his, surprise him into making that weird, endearing sound he did when he was not quite laughing.

Rilla’s thoughts came to a screeching halt, her steps flattering a few meters away from the gym.

What was she thinking about? Why did she fantasize about kissing Arum? She loved Damien. They hadn’t seen each other as much lately, yes, but the thought of him still managed to warm her heart, even now. Nothing had changed on this front.

But she wanted to kiss Arum.

That wasn’t… how was she supposed to deal with this?

Rationally, the best thing to do would be to talk to Damien about it, but, knowing him, he would immediately assume she wanted to leave him.  
And that… no.  
The thought alone left a sour taste in her mouth. Damien was silly, and constantly anxious, but he was also incredibly sweet, funny, and courageous. He knew how to cheer her up when she needed him to, and he would have flipped mountains over for her.

Even if all of this hadn’t been true, she just loved him, plain and simple.  
Even if the skin of her shoulder hadn’t been marked with a crest that felt warm and reassuring every time Damien so much as looked at her, she would have known that. She didn’t need any evidence, any test, to know it, she just _felt_ it, a strange sort of warmth that would sit silently in the back of her thoughts at any moments. And yes, maybe Rilla didn’t quite understand it; maybe the scientific theories around soulmates had made her roll her eyes once or twice but there had never been a doubt in her mind that _Damien_ was _hers_. Her soulmate, her boyfriend, her... whatever as long as he stayed _hers_. And nothing would ever change that if she had anything to say about it.  
Under no circumstance would she push him out of her life, for any reason.

Arum could wait, she decided. He was intelligent, and witty, a bit grumpy but ultimately nice, and handsome in a strange way, but he wasn’t Damien. She had the time to get to know him better, and maybe introduce him to Damien if this… attraction didn’t fade, and go from there.  
She just had to stay rational about this, and there was no reason for anything to go wrong.  
Right.

She would just let this rest for now, and take the time to think about it. She had ample time. The semester would last another two months, and Arum was sharing her class. Neither him nor Damien were going anywhere: she had the time to decide what to do.

Her phone went off, distracting her from her thoughts.

“Hello, Marc.”

“Hey, princess! How are you doing?”

Rilla rolled her eyes, unable to completely stop her smile from seeping into her voice.

“Stop calling me that. And I’m fine. How are you?”

“Oh you know, same old, same old… keeping busy with the nerd squad, taking my pills, charming girls…”

“How are your legs?”

“Just fine, why thank you.” But he was talking too fast and Rilla could almost see his grimace through the phone.

“Marc…”

“Alright _fine_ , I _may_ have exaggerated a bit with the pills. I kind of ran short so I’ve been taking half for… um… a week? But I’m fine, I’ll restock tomorrow.”

“ _Marc_! You shouldn’t play with your dose!”

“I know, I know, don’t worry! I just had to wait for payday! It’s not a big deal.”

“Marc…”

“Anyway! That’s not why I was calling! What do we do next week? Usual meet up in that bar big bad and stupid works at?”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Fiiine, I’ll play nice. What do you want for your birthday?”

“Nothing. I want you and Talfryn to be there. You don’t need to find me a present.”

“Nuh-uh. I’m not letting that boyfriend of yours take all the honors. You’re getting a wonderful present and that’s final.”

Rilla rolled her eyes.

“Great.”

The door to the gym was opening, and students were slowly milling out. Rilla could see Damien at the back of the crowd of archers, looking relaxed but a bit put upon.

“I need to run. I’ll tell Tal you said hello! See you next week.”

Damien’s eyes finally crossed hers, and he began trotting up to her.

“Bye, Marc.”

Marc hung up and she lowered her phone slowly as Damien reached her.

“Rilla. I didn’t know you were coming by.” She took his hand, noticing he’d covered his soulmark with some tissue to play. It wasn’t entirely unusual of him - although she hadn’t seen the cover in a while - but she would have liked being able to trace her flower on Damien’s wrist with her finger, to feel their bond through its physical representation. She forced her eyes away from the fabric before Damien could notice.

“Well, _someone_ hasn’t been answering his texts, so I thought I’d find you instead.”

Damien immediately looked guilty.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine, Damien. I know you’ve been busy.” She played with his fingers, feeling the skin where it was callused from banding his bow. “I just wanted to see you.”

She touched his reddened cheek, feeling as she went Damien leaning into her finger, in a way she knew wasn't entirely conscious. Slowly, she pulled him down to her level.  
The kiss was soft and warm, and she melted into his welcoming embrace, relishing in the contact.  
Only now that she got to touch him, feel his warmth, did she realize just how much she’d missed him in those both short and unending weeks.

“Rilla…” Damien sounded breathless and looked at her like she’d hung the moon when they separated. It was an exhilarating sight. He blinked, and Rilla couldn’t help but feel proud at the fact that he had to recompose himself after that kiss. “Who was on the phone?”

“Marc. He wanted to make sure we still had the same plans for next week.”

Damien’s face stayed as neutral as he could, and Rilla had to laugh.

“Come on, he’s not that bad. Surely you boys can stand each other for _one_ night.”

He looked contrite enough that she didn’t feel the need to poke fun at him _too_ much.

“For you, Rilla, I’ll do anything.” He said, tone and expression serious.

“I know you will.” And the thought really shouldn’t have been as nice as it was – Rilla wasn’t some kind of damsel in distress – “That said, what about a shower, first? And then, I want you to tell me what I missed.”

She had to laugh at the tomato-red color that spread on Damien’s cheek, but she still kissed his timid pout to lessen the blow.

 

* * *

 

 

Rilla’s tiny student flat was a bit old, but it felt cozy, and Damien would probably have liked it even if it didn’t house the love of his life. Her shower didn’t have the best pressure, but the water came out scalding hot: just what he needed after a long, frustrating shooting practice.

“Much better.” Commented Rilla when he came out of the shower - skin warm and tingly still, dressed in comfortable clothes she kept around for him – and hugged her from behind, delicately passing a hand in her hair, unbound out of their braid for once, and falling down on her back.

“Can I help you with something?” he murmured in her neck, savoring the simple feeling of her skin against his after missing the closeness for over two weeks.

How could he have forgotten about this? This quiet, warm tranquility that made the rest of the world fall away.  
How could he have doubted this was all he needed?

“Ummm, I’m quite liking the service as it is.”

She took his hand in his, staying clear of the handkerchief he’d wrapped around his wrist. The mark seemed to constantly burn and shift lately and he couldn’t stand to see it all the time, in the periphery of his vision, drawing his gaze like the sight of an oncoming catastrophe.

He needed to tell Rilla. He needed to talk about this before the words festered and died in his throat, before the air between them turned bitter and sour.

He said nothing.

“Was your practice okay? You didn’t seem too happy earlier.”

Damien muffled a groan in her neck. Truth was, practice had been nothing short of terrible: he’d been distracted the whole time, mulling over the last encounter he’d had with a certain lizard. He hadn’t wished to even give Damien his name.  
Was it something that he had done? Of course it was! He’d almost fled in front of him, as if he thought he was some kind of… of evil beast! And the stranger couldn’t even hope to understand, it’s not like he had any soul mark with Damien’s crest on him. He must have looked like an ignorant fool to him.

Right. Monsters didn’t have soul marks. Because they didn’t have soul mates. Damien didn’t have any reason to worry about this anymore.

He didn't.

And yet.

How was he supposed to forget those eyes?

“Damien?”

“Oh right, sorry.”

He let Rilla get the hot plate on the table, but she only turned around to look him right in the eyes.

“You know you can talk to me right? It’s rare for you not share whatever is happening.”

Damien froze.

“I…”

He couldn’t help but glance at his covered wrist, and Rilla caught the movement, following it and frowning at the cloth there.

“It’s not… very important.”

Her eyes came back to his, searching his expression. Damien was a bad liar, he knew that, but this wasn’t a lie! His soul mark was just acting up, but for no actual reason that he could think of: it _wasn’t_ important. He was just worrying over nothing. It wouldn't be the first time.

Rilla didn’t seem satisfied at that response, but finally dropped her stare, only squeezing his hand once before turning back to her pan.

“Okay. But don’t let it eat at you, alright? If it’s not important then you shouldn’t worry so much over it.”

Damien’s smile was brittle and uncertain when she kissed him again.  
It felt like he’d betrayed her all over again.

 

The rest of the evening was quiet.

Rilla didn’t know what to make of Damien’s rebuttal from earlier. It was the first time since they were together, that he had refused to “speak his heart”. It reminded her of an overzealous student, speaking to her for the first time, blushing with his whole body when she asked him where he was finding all of his poems.   
And even then, it hadn’t been long before he’d confessed his love and shyly uncovered the flowers on his wrist, declaming a poem for _his amaryllis_.

Had she been so distant that he felt he couldn’t talk to her anymore? Had this newfound attraction for a grumpy scientist of a lizard had any effect on her relationship to Damien that she’d failed to notice?

_Was he hiding his soul mark because her flower was beginning to fade?_

No.  
_No_ , that was stupid, ridiculous… She hadn’t stopped loving Damien, she _never_ would. And even if she _had_ – which she _had not!_ – soul marks weren’t known to just disappear.

Maybe he had worked himself into a frenzy again, sure that the two other flowers there meant he was to abandon her, to hurt her in some way. He always seemed to come up with the worst case scenarios…  
Rilla didn’t know what to think about the other flowers on her soulmate's wrist. Despite him not ever daring say it out loud, she knew Damien thought she might die or something equally traumatizing, sending him of to his next soulmate. But he hated the idea so much Rilla didn’t feel like that could be possible. Damien couldn’t have for soulmate someone whose very existence he rejected with his whole being.  
And _she_ loved Damien’s soul mark: loved its delicate lines and bright colors. She’d always thought the two other flowers designated Angelo or a dear friend of Damien. Someone who would help and support Damien when his anxiety took the better of him. Despite what he seemed to think, she found the trio of flowers comforting, in a way. With them, she had the assurance that someone would always care for him when he needed them to.

“Maybe we should go to bed, darling? You seem tired.”

Rilla noted the book closed in her lap, and the heavy way her head rested on Damien’s shoulder.

“That seems like a very good idea, mister knight.”

Damien blushed at the nickname, and Rilla kissed him to make him even redder.

 

Later that night, as she was trying to finally fall asleep, Rilla gripped Damien’s hand, feeling the slow pulse of warmth coming from her soul mark, beating in time with his heart.  
She tried not to think of how it would feel to have other arms wrapped around her and Damien both, a reassuring weight to bind them even tighter together. She tried not to think of the fact that this was beginning to exceed the simple attraction.

She had Damien.  
As long as she had Damien, she would be fine.

They would be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry to say I probably won't be able to finish this by the 1rst, because I have to get back more seriously and finish my bang fic, and also this got even longer while I wasn't looking (you might have noticed the fact that this is probably going to contain one more chapter than expected....). I don't know how exaclty how things are gonna shake, but I'll publish the next chapter, at the latest, on the 20th of January, and by then I should be able to finish this in one or two weeks.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arum is very tired of surprises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hi I'm sorry this chapter is so short. Life kicked my ass in a bad way recently and I had to scramble with writing this even though I thought I'd be fine (ah, fat chance).  
> I really wanted to post as I'd promised on the 20th, but it does mean I had to shorten the chapter a bit so as to not give you gibberrish, and I'm not quite sure of when I'll be able to finish this.

“Hey Arum,” said Rilla, careful to keep her voice level as she measured the time it took for their preparation to turn the right color. “Are you doing anything this week-end?”

She tried to look at him without being too obvious about it. She didn’t want to spook him, but her birthday party seemed like the best time to introduce him to her friends and family so neither he nor Damien would freak out too much about meeting one another. To Arum, he would only be one friend among others, and to Damien, only a nice lab partner of Rilla. If she was lucky enough, both Damien and Marc would be distracted away from their ridiculous feud for one another upon meeting not only a new person, but also a monster, that potentially had a lot of interesting stories to tell them both.  
Rilla had turned it over and over in her head over the last two days, and she felt like her plan was sound.  
She only had to make sure Arum accepted to come.

He shrugged. It was kind of cute, a movement so obviously foreign to his two sets of shoulders he must have taken it from human behavior.

“Working on architectural design probably.” His head tilted slightly on one side, which Rilla had realized meant he was trying to figure something out. It occurred a lot when he was riffling through social conventions. Somehow, Rilla didn’t think that was a monster problem: it seemed Arum had never been much of a social flower. “Are you… doing anything this week-end?” The question was hesitant: Arum obviously not quite sure this was the response expected of him.

Completely clueless. Was Rilla that bad? She honestly wasn’t sure.

“As a matter of fact, I am.” She carefully levered her sample out of the test tube, still side-eying him discreetly. “My birthday is Saturday" – he made an aborted movement with his head, which she knew was the expression he reserved for any ‘silly human behavior’ – "and we’re having a party with a few friends…”  
Still no real reaction. Saints was this lizard dense.

“That seems… nice?”

He was blinking at her, obviously incredibly confused at the whole conversation. It seemed Rilla didn’t have a choice then… she needed to face the situation head-on, and hope for the best.

“Would you like to come?” She said, and this time, she looked Arum right in the eyes.

He had an interesting reaction then, something she wasn’t sure how to interpret: his frills fluttered and flattened themselves against his neck and he made an aborted movement with one of his arms.

“Are you… Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I don’t see why not. You’d meet my friends! Marc and Damien can be a bit intense, but I’m sure you’d like Talfryn, and I think Angelo is physically incapable of being mean.”

Arum was inscrutable, but he decidedly didn’t look happy about it all.

“Damien?” he said, and maybe Rilla was imagining it, but it seemed like his accent was more pronounced on the word than usual.

“Yeah. He’s my boyfriend. Do you… know him?”

Arum looked at her, the test tube in his hand dangling dangerously.

“No. I don’t think I do.” He looked somewhat confused, an emotion that Rilla was able to recognize this time, and his voice was less comprehensible than ever, the words more hissed than said.

Was he… lying?

“Okay… So, are going to come?”

He was silent for an instant, pointedly looking away from her while he was looking for the tube's assigned place, along with the other test tubes for their experiments.

“Rilla…” Maybe he thought he was being subtle about it, but she could clearly see his eyes looking back at her, even though he was trying to sound casual and disinterested. “I don’t think this is… a good idea.”

Rilla frowned. She had envisaged the possibility that Arum didn’t want to subject himself to a group of “filthy, loud humans”, but he didn’t sound disdainful or annoyed. In fact, he seemed almost… regretful? Was he afraid Rilla’s friends would... reject him? Oh. Of course. Being a monster and all, it was very likely some humans were less than happy about meeting him. Rilla knew him by now, and she was pretty sure Arum would actually make a poor fighter, but he did seem imposing at first glance, and humans did have a history of not handle what they were afraid of very well.

“Arum…” She extended a comforting hand to pat his shoulder. Rilla didn't think that would even be an issue but, she wouldn’t allow any of her friends to hurt him.

Arum’s scaly shoulders were unexpectedly hot under her fingers, sending a soothing warmth up her arm, and where she had expected them to be hard and jagged, their texture was strangely soft. The whole feeling was entirely too comfortable, as if Rilla could…

The sound of glass breaking snapped her back in time.

“Oh! I’m sorry!”

She snatched her hand back, feeling incredibly silly as Arum watched her, his expression indecipherable. His eyes were as wide as it seemed they could get, and they were boring straight into her, frozen, as if she was the first human Arum had ever seen.

“Arum…? Are you…”

“I need to go.”

“What?” Rilla scrambled to get her bearing, but Arum was already shoving all his belonging into his messenger bag, not caring that his observation sheet was getting ripped in the process. “Wait! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

She unthinkingly reached with her hand to try and stop him, but he flinched back, making a small sound in the back of his throat as if she was scaring him.

“Sorry!”

He barely even looked at her as he literally fled the lab, under the baffled stares of the few other students working on their projects.

She was left alone with a broken test tube and a half-completed experience on her hands.

“Rilla? I just saw Arum storm away as if…” professor DeMaggio cut himself off when he saw the mess in front of her. “What happened?”

“I…” Rilla’s throat worked uselessly for a few seconds. Had she really breached some kind of taboo touching Arum? She’d lightly thought of what it would mean if she somehow got overly intimate with him by accident but she had never expected it to be quite so… dramatic. “I don’t know.”

Was he gone for good?

 

Arum almost stumbled into the tree, but caught himself first, closing his eyes as he sat down on the dead leaves paving the wood’s floor. Everything was bright, too bright. Each and every little details of the forest he knew so well now seemed to be coated in a different light, and his poor brain scrambled to reconciliate everything he was seeing with his usual experience of the world.  
God, was this how humans saw the world? No wonder they accomplished so little. Arum had only had a similar vision for under ten minutes, and he could already feel an headache start to weight his brow down.

He tried to breath calmly, in and out, in, and out. He could still feel the phantom feeling of Rilla brushing his shoulder. She didn’t seem to have felt much from the touch, although Arum had been so shocked to see the world suddenly flash with a hundred new colors he honestly didn’t think he could trust his senses to have reliably informed him of anything right then. And then he’d just… stormed out.  
Would she worry? For the first time, Arum regretted having brushed off his Keep about getting a phone, just so that he could assure Rilla she hadn’t done anything wrong.

But then again, maybe she wouldn’t. She didn’t have any reason to, after all. He was just some pitiful monster who could barely handle spending more than a few hours with humans at a time, and if her Damien was the same boy he’d met in the woods, she probably wouldn’t want him anywhere near her boyfriend.

Not that it mattered, he reminded himself, because the mark on his chest and the new colors in his eyes were a lie.  
Monsters didn’t have soulmates, and even if they did, humans still wouldn’t have wanted anything with them. Arum had had enough proof of that.

He tried opening his eyes again, just a touch, only to catch sight of his own hand, flashing a vibrant color back at him: much more violent than the faded, comforting shade he was used to. He shut his eyes tightly again; but even with them closed, he could tell that the forest around him was strange and unwelcoming.

It was too quiet, and the earth smelled wrong, and Arum missed his Keep fiercely.  
He imagined being back in her embrace, feeling her walls reassuringly drape themselves over him, and listening to her soothing lullaby until he fell into a deep, warm sleep.  
She would be disappointed if he came back to her now, his semester unfinished, and his projects abandoned.  
She would ask what of his soulmates, but Arum didn’t… he couldn’t think about that right now.  
When she’d seen the crawl of words appear on his skin for the first time, he’d been only a small bean in a pod, and she’d always tell him stories about how he’d met his soulmate, how they’d somehow fall in together, as if the world was suddenly made for them. He’d wanted to believe it, then. Titan’s Bloom was his home, but it was lonely, and monsters didn’t like a hatchling that had such humans, such restricting markings on their body as he did.  
He’d thought the world of humans to be fascinating and he’d imagined his soulmate would have a brilliant mind, understanding and completing his studies, and letting words like magic fall from their mouth.

He knew now this all had been wishful thinking on their part. The human world was just as cold as those upturned face of his youth, and his soulmates -  _both his soulmates -_  didn’t need him. He was a stick in the mud, a plant that should never have grown, deprived as he was of the sun in thick woods, and now that he was standing, the dark waters pushed against him, trying to get him to bend and fall, while the petals of dying flowers brushed past him.

His Keep would have made fun of him, for being so melodramatic about all of this.  
He didn’t need to get any closer to Rilla, to see Damien again, he would just finish this miserable degree and then, he’ll be done with this miserable time, and he could get back to his Keep, alone and entirely content.

 

* * *

 

 

Damien tried to take a deep breath before entering the bar. He mouthed the frist few verses of the poem he’d finally managed to write for his proposal, feeling how the words felt on his tongue, how his lips shaped them, trying to imagine how they'd sound released into the naked air. He’d had to rewrite entire segments of it - the first lines he’d thought of in the woods somehow feeling wrong, out of place - but now he had the whole piece: the set up was perfect, the ring, he hoped, was to Rilla’s taste, only remained the need for him to actually do it, to offer himself to Rilla on her birthday, after she'd spent the night with the people she held dearest.  
He had another gift, of course! He didn’t want to presume! But if she said yes… if she let him be hers for the rest of his life… Damien tried not to think of the fact that she might say no. If she did, it’d be fine, maybe she didn’t want that kind of stuffy, official engagement, maybe she’d think it was too soon! Maybe she really didn’t want to and the idea that Damien would propose this to her was enough for her to…

Deep breaths: he needed to take deep breaths. Rilla was his soulmate, she was the love of his life: his flower, his amaryllis. Whatever would happen, _that_ wouldn’t change, and so he didn’t need to worry about it: he just _had_ to _breathe_.

He finally entered the bar, and immediately saw her, in a corner of the bar. Right next to her sat Talfryn and Marc, and Damien swallowed down his automatic irritation at the sight of the older sibling. This was a night about Rilla, and Marc was her brother. It was normal for her to want to spend time with him, and Damien had promised to be agreeable to the man.

Rilla saw him and smiled.

“My lady.” He said, with a slight bow.

“Sir,” she responded, allowing him to take hold of his hand to kiss it. She rolled her eyes at the gesture, but humored Damien easily enough.

“For the most beautiful flower I’ve ever had the chance to rest my eyes on,” he pulled from behind his back a small bouquet “a small token of my admiration.” It had a red amaryllis at its center, and was surrounded by a few white and gold smaller flowers, which only complimented it more.

There was a gagging noise on his left and Damien send a glare Marc’s way as Rilla gently took the bouquet from his hand.

“Damien, you shouldn’t have.”

“I did have to! This is your birthday and…”

“You shouldn’t have.” Rilla interrupted him more forcefully. “But I’m glad that you did.”

She pulled on his hand, and Damien stumbled awkwardly into the booth next to her. She was smiling, noted Damien, but she looked tired, as if she’d been staying up again to try and complete one of her experiments. He recognized the look well, but he couldn’t remember her mentioning any project that would have required her to miss sleep as of late.

“So, are we getting this party started or what?” Interrupted Marc, and Rilla turned away from Damien.

“Are you really that eager to get drunk, Marc? Do you _ever_ learn?”

“Life is too short to be reasonable!”

“And _your_ life is guaranteed to be short, so I guess I understand where you’re coming from.”

“Hello, Damien.” Said Talfryn, quiet and unassuming besides his two louder siblings.

“Hello.”

“Good evening, dear friends! I have brought you our drinks to celebrate our charming Rilla’s birthday!”

The glasses were quickly dispatched, and Angelo sat down next to Marc, immediately raising his own beer in a toast:

“To Rilla!”

“To Rilla!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It'll get better I promise! They'll be just fiiine  
> Probably >.>
> 
> I am gonna have a lot to do in the next three weeks or so but I Will Finish this, and the next chapter willbe up at the very least on the 15th of February (there, now I have something to hold myself up to u.u)
> 
> I welcome any screaming you might want to direct at me u.u


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The knot is starting to loosen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you it was going to get better!  
> Eventually :)
> 
> Also, super sorry for the delay, I had to deal with some real life bulsshit lately and it peaked friday night so I decided to take a break instead of finishing this. But I feel like it enabled me to make this chapter better so I hope you'll enjoy it :)  
> <3

Rilla was finally beginning to relax, quietly joking with Talfryn as Angelo and Marc slowly began to engage in an unstated drinking contest which was guaranteed to end with them both under the table. Despite his size, Angelo didn’t handle his liquor that well and Marc, once a bit tipsy, kept forgetting how much alcohol he had already ingested, until he would be face down on the floor trying to talk with Dampierre.

Damien, for now, seemed content to stay mostly silent and to listen to her catch up with her less obnoxious sibling.

Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was her birthday and that her brothers had driven up specifically to see her, Rilla would have asked Damien for a quiet night where she could curl up with him in bed and forget about this whole week. Her head had been hurting almost constantly since the incident with Arum at the lab, and she was starting to suspect she had caught some kind of virus from one of the other students.  
Did Arum get sick? If he did, how did it translate with his different biology? She wasn’t sure he had the kind of gland to produce snot and tears. She’d have to ask him the next time she’d see him. If she got the chance to. She hadn’t heard at all from him, and since - as far as she knew - he didn’t have a phone, or her number, for that matter, she had no way of knowing if he was angry at her, or ignoring her, or if somehow his freak-out had been completely unrelated to her touching him.  
Right, because _that_ sounded likely.

And because it seemed misery loved company, her brain had been acting up all week. Despite the fact that her olfactory sensors were somewhat inexistent, she’d been catching phantom whiffs of scents on and off, making her sneeze violently at times, which only added to her headache. Even now, she kept catching herself trying to track down a faint smell that wasn’t there.

“And so we finally managed to get the baby ferret to drink his milk anyway, so I guess it ended well.”

Thank Saints for Talfryn, thought Rilla. That boy was oblivious enough she would have to faint for him to realize she was feeling under the weather, and she didn’t want to alert Damien or Mark. One would be a nervous wreck about it and apologize a hundred times while the other was too constipated with feelings to simply help without snark, and Rilla had the energy to deal with neither. Besides, Talfryn was always quietly happy to talk about his studies without the insufferable auto-congratulation of his brother, and listening to him be passionated about it was always nice.

“Hey, Talfryn, is there any monsters in your class?”

“Uh? Oh. No, not really. There are some in the university, but none in the veterinary branch, and I haven’t spoken to any of them. Why?”

“There’s one in my class, and I’m afraid I’ve offended him somehow.”

“Offended him? It’s a monster Rilla!”

She arched her brow at Marc, slouching a bit in his wheelchair, a pint of beer dangling dangerously from his fingers.

“So what? Monsters can get offended too.”

“Sure they can, but…” he scrunched up his nose, searching his words. “why do you care? I mean, they’re monsters, right? They’re probably evil anyways.”

Rilla would have rolled her eyes were it not for her pounding headache.

“Right. And all human boys are dumbasses, got it.”

Damien made a small, pitiful sound and Rilla patted his arm gently.

“Rilla,” he intervened, surprising her “I do think Marc isn’t entirely wrong _this_ _time_.” – incredulous, Rilla turned towards him – “I… I mean, I’m sure this monster person is nice, but maybe you should be careful.”

Rilla’s other eyebrows arched.

“Are you agreeing with _him_? Over _this_?”

She could only think of Arum, hugging himself and taking as little place as possible when he was easily a head taller than everyone else. Of Arum, that had been nice, and sweet, and shared his stories with her.

“Well, it is known that monsters can be a bit… err, monstrous, right? Devious, maybe?”

Arum, that had looked scared when she’d been about to touch him again.

“I can’t believe this.”

Damien's eyes opened wide. He was about to apologize, Rilla could see it clear as day, in the way the line of his mouth trembled a bit, but sometimes Damien was a bit thick-headed, and frankly, Rilla didn’t have the energy to deal with that right then.

“You know what? I need a bit of fresh air.”

“What? I’ll…”

“Alone. I need to clear my head anyways.”

“Are you… you okay, Rilla?”

Rilla sighed.

“Fine. Thank you for coming down, Tal.”

“It was… nice, I guess. Should we give the gift to Damien, then?”

“Yeah, whatever. It was nice, and all.”

Rilla gave a vague wave before stomping out. Maybe she was being too harsh with Damien, but he deserved it, and she really did need to get out. As soon as she left the heavy ambiance of the bar, she felt much better. The fake scent she'd been catching whiffs of disappeared as well, and she let out a sigh of relief. Amnosia was mostly inconsequential in her life, but when brain chemistry got tangled in it, it could become really annoying to deal with. Her head felt clearer already, and suddenly coming back to her flat to get sleep didn’t seem quite as appealing as just walking around and make the best of the fresh autumn air.

 Damien would need the time to understand he'd been an ass anyway, so she tried not to feel too bad as she moved away from the bar.

 

Arum peered cautiously through the glass of the bar, trying not to look too shady as he scrutinized the interior of the establishment. But not only could he not see a sign of Rilla anywhere, a big, frankly terrifying human girl gave a him a bit of a look, as if she was wondering what exactly he thought he was doing here. Her companion, looking smaller and drunker, mumbled something into his drink and Arum lost her attention.  
He didn’t wait to flee the scene, before anyone could act on the weird lizard spying on local bars.

He felt stupid. Seeking Rilla out was stupid. She probably thought he was some kind of freaky little monster, and even if she didn’t, he couldn’t really explain to her that he suddenly saw the world in technicolor. Not after he’d seen how humans reacted to having a monster for a soulmate.

But maybe she’d been offended, maybe even saddened by his departure, and he needed to make sure she knew he didn’t resent her before he went back to the Keep.

Because he was going back. He was going home. He hadn’t made any of his bags yet, but between skipping his architecture and sociology classes, he’d decided it didn’t make sense to stay any longer in the Second Citadel. His Keep might have pretended to send him off so he could complete a human degree - or whatever it was they called it - they both knew the real goal had been to meet his soulmate – _soulmates_ , as it turned out. But there was to be no happy ending for him, no tearful reunion.  
_His_ soulmates didn’t want him, didn’t even _need_ him, and _he_ certainly didn’t need any kind of certification to justify his architectural skills. It’s not like he needed a “job” anyway. He and his Keep had one another - at least until his own death - and he didn’t need anything else.

But it felt… impolite, at the least, to leave without a last goodbye to Rilla. Trying to scan the bars surrounding the campus was a bit of a long shot: Rilla hadn’t even said where her birthday party was taking place, after all, but if he didn’t find her he’d at least have the excuse of having tried.

Arum tried not to think of what would happen if he _did_ find her, but a hundred scenarii played in his head anyway without his say so. Maybe she’d be angry, call him any kind of name to express her displeasure over him leaving in the middle of their lab tests.  
She wasn’t like that though.  
She would be worried: most likely, confused, and ask Arum what she’d done wrong. She would look determined, her jaw clenched as it did when she didn’t like Arum’s methodology, and he would only have to explain that he’d been reminded of something he had to do, something important. Or he would tell her that he’d never been to what could be called monster school because his chest was branded like a human, and because the touch of her fingers had awaken a world of colors he wasn’t supposed to see. She would be confused, she would be angry, she would be glad he was going away.  
Maybe she’d want him to stay…

Arum exhaled angrily as he scanned another bar, ignoring the murmurs of some human patrons as he did so. He was going to leave. Seeking anything with a human was stupid: he would never fit in. Be it Rilla, or that Damien… it was clear they were too different for it to be a good idea. And even then! Damien had looked at him like he was about to rip his arm off, that first time. He would never accept the idea of actually spending time with Arum: even less to share his girlfriend, assuming his and Rilla’s were the same Damien.

No Rilla in this one either.

There was only one bar left that Arum could think of, and after that, his numerous fantasies upon seeing Rilla one last time would be pointless, because he would not find her.  
One more, thought Arum, and then he’d be able to go home. Pack his luggage from his stupid human dorm room, and portal to his Keep to curl up in her midst and forget this whole affair. Monster didn’t have soulmates, and he wasn’t an exception.

She wasn’t in the last bar. Arum took his time scanning it but he couldn’t see her proud, relaxed figure, with her long dark braid thrown over her shoulder or resting at the small of her back.  
He should have been relieved, happy to see she wasn’t there, to confirm he didn’t have to explain anything to her. Instead, he felt tired and hollow, as if the entirety of his body had been filled with the cold, dead water of a deep lake, and he had to resist the urge to open a portal right then, right there to finally put an end to this stupid foray into human drama.

 

The bar was full of people, including a human man that looked as though he was actually taller than Arum himself, sitting down with two other young men. The three of them were angled toward a fourth, unmoving, his familiar eyes boring straight into Arum’s.

Oh. He turned to leave, trying not look as if he was trying to rush out of the street. His dorm room wasn’t far. He could pack his bags and go make a portal in the forest, and he’d get to sleep in the walls of his Keep tonight.

“ _You_.”

Arum froze, stopping in his tracks. Damien’s voice sounded angry, a tone Arum didn’t have any problem categorizing in humans’ voices.

A hand touched his lower right arm, shooting a zing of warmth across his body, and he jumped a bit, his frills flaring over his head. Why was the human following him around if he didn’t want anything to do with him? Arum was tired, and bitter.

“Honeysuckle.” He responded, trying to sound “casual” as he turned around.

Damien didn’t _look_ happy either.

“Don’t call me that!” His voice shook as he said it, but his face looked as though he was trying not to swallow something foul-tasting.

Well, there didn’t seem to be any improvement. Arum tore his arm away from Damien’s hold and the human’s eyes fixated on it, glassy for an instant as if he was trying to understand how his hand had came to rest on a monster’s skin. There was some kind of chill in the air, and Arum put his arms around himself to try and protect himself for it.

“This is all your fault!”

Somewhere, somehow, Arum must have expected him to apologize, maybe, or to recognize that they did share a mark, did share a soul bond, because that one sentence still managed to break something loose around his heart, and thus one more of his vital organ sank into the abyss that had become his being.

“I was going to propose to Rilla! But everything is going wrong! I didn’t… I couldn’t…”

His voice broke before he could finish and his face was getting redder by the second.

“Rilla? Do you know where she is?” _Propose? Isn’t that what human couples do to make their bond official?_

“Rilla!” Damien repeated, a surprisingly high and loud sound. “She’s gone!”

Arum wondered an instant if he was supposed to do something: Damien’s shade was getting worrying. Then suddenly, he snapped his head back towards Arum.

“How do you know Rilla?!”

Arum was surprised into responding.

“She’s in my botany…”

“ _You_ did this!”

“I… What?”

“This is all your fault! Confusing me,” Damien took hold of one of Arum’s left wrists, in a tight, almost painful grip. “Tricking me with your _eyes_ and your _words_.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Was Rilla your target all along? Is that why you’re _tormenting_ me?”

“I didn’t…” Damien didn’t let him finish, taking hold of is sweater collar with his other hand and gripping it tight.

“What _did you do_ to me _?_ ”

“Nothing!” But Damien wasn’t listened, and he was pushing into Arum’s space, his face red and wet, and scrunched up in anger. _Is he going to hit me?_ Thought Arum a bit helplessly.

“What did you do to _her_?”

“Nothing!” Arum would suffer a lot but not the insinuation that he would hurt Rilla.

“Why…”

“Get your hands _off_ me!”

Arum used his three free hands to force the grip Damien had on his collar off, and then he was left with a handful of shocked-looking human, who had both his hands entangled with Arum’s one way or another. It might have felt sweet if they hadn’t both snatched their hands back, Arum’s sharp nail almost grazing Damien’s fragile skin.

“I’m sor…” He could be whatever he wanted to be, Arum wasn’t interested.

“I didn’t do anything, to you _or_ Rilla” he hissed angrily “and I think you’ll be happy I won’t do anything around here anymore because I am leaving this miserable city. Turns out humans aren’t all that. Don’t fret, honeysuckle: you’ve seen the last of me.”

He didn’t wait for a reply as he turned around to leave. The water inside of him was now boiling, with something akin to anger, and it felt almost as satisfying as it hurt, as if it would all come hurtling out of him if he only opened his mouth again.  
So he walked, his jaw resolutely locked, and if Damien said anything else, he didn’t hear him.

 

In a somewhat unsurprising turn of event, Rilla found herself in front of the campus greenhouse. It was, after all, a calming place, and she enjoyed the surroundings as much as she did the researching itself when she worked there. The whole place had a soothing effect on her nerves, and she thought about sending a quick text to Damien to at least reassure him some. He’d been a bit stupid but maybe not quite so much to warrant her strong reaction. That said, he could wait a bit more, and think about her reason to be annoyed and disappointed.

She entered the building, and walked slowly among the flowers. The whole thing was beautiful, and while Rilla wasn’t a poet and a nature lover like Damien was, she could still appreciate the somewhat simple beauty of her most common test subjects. But there, in the greenhouse, her nose was once again filled with a sweet, phantom scent, and she huffed, annoyed. Was her brain creating artificial floral scents simply because she was in a floral environment? If that was a way of the universe to remind Rilla that the workings of the brain were still an absolute mystery to science, well, she didn’t particularly appreciate it.

The few amaryllis flowers stood at the end of one of the alleys. For all Rilla knew, they probably were the test subjects of some other biology student, or used by the bouquet making club. Maybe they were even no longer subjects to any kind of use, and had simply stayed there because nobody had cared to replace them with some other plant. She liked them. Not even really because of her name, but mostly because she could recognize in them the flower that sat on Damien’s wrist.

The scent seemed to come from their left, where sat a batch of cute yellow flowers. Rilla frowned a bit considering them. Somehow the scent… stood out: it seemed different from the general smell of something Rilla usually got from her misfiring brain. They were familiar, too, and as soon as she had that thought she realized why: in it stood the almost exact replica of another of the flowers on Damien’s wrist. When they had first met, she’d researched the two other flowers she could trace on his skin. Even then, Damien had been an absolute wreck at the idea of other parts to his soul mark, so they hadn’t spoken much about it, but Rilla knew he’d learned everything he could about them, mostly, probably, to compose poems about them: Amaryllis, Honeysuckle and Arum… Lily.

Oh.

Her headaches had started around when she’d last seen Arum, hadn’t they?

She caught a whiff of the flower before her. It smelled nice, and clear, separate from the muddled, faint scents Rilla usually caught.

How long has it been since she’d seen Damien’s soul mark?

 _Oh_.

 

Damien was startled out of his frozen panic by the sound of his phone ringing. He ignored Angelo, hovering slightly next to him, to get it out. Then he saw he caller ID and scrambled to respond.

“Rilla! I’m sorry I didn’t…”

“Damien, shush. I have a very important question: did your mark change recently?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damien can be a real poop.
> 
> Amnosia is a real thing, I did not make it up, you can look it up up but it's basically partial or complete "smell blindness" that can be the result of an accident of be a condition from birth. I thought of Rilla's manifestation of it as color blindness, when you can only separate a few scents from one another, and not smell some of the other at all.
> 
> I'm very tired so ill be brief: lots of stuff, looots of stuff irl. I'll put the next and final chapter on march 5th at the latest.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long needed talk, a departure, and a lot of tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so remember when I said his was going to be four chapters long? And then, I said, oops it's longer than that. But for sure, it's gonna be 6 chapters long.  
> Yeah.  
> Well, apparentely I was wrong. I think this is the second to last chapter, but maybe I should stop making predictions...:x
> 
> It's fiiiiine  
> Also this chapter is a lot longer than expected and it's not super edited because I'm tired  
> And those last scenes were very hard to write because I had to keep myself from constantly writing Diamond instead of Damien >.>
> 
> /!\ attention, minor world-building spoilers for the second citadel finale part 4, because my idea was apparently close enough to kevin vibert's that it just helped make this better (hopefully)

“Damien?”

There was a muffled sound on the other end of the line.

“I’m sorry…” murmured Damien, badly hiding a sob.

“Damien, it’s _fine_. You did nothing wrong, calm down. I just need to know:  _did your mark change_?”

She waited for Damien to find his breath back impatiently: it had to be, _it had to be_.

“Yes.” Finally admitted Damien, and she could hear a rustle a fabric, probably him wiping his eyes.

The sigh she let out felt like it was expelling all of the dread and unease that had been resting on her chest for over a week. She could feel a smile bloom on her face.

“It’s fine, Damien, I’m not mad, I’m not injured, I’m not even sick. It’s _fine_ , okay? Is that what you've been worrying so much about lately?”

“ _Rilla_ ” Damien let out a long, shuddery breath.

“It’s really okay, don't worry.”

Damien mumbled something, sounding defeated.

“What?”

“He called me Honeysuckle.”

“What? What do you mean?"  _He called..._  "Wait. Damien. Did you _meet_ Arum?

Upon hearing the name, Damien made a strangled, pathetic sound.

“Oh _Damien._   _Babe_. He’s your _soulmate_.”

“ _You're_ …”

“He’s mine too! I can smell the flowers, Damien. _Our_ flowers.”

And there it was, a smile again, so big she could barely move her lips around it.

There a long silence at the other end of the line, then Damien’s voice came again, small and scared.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Oh... I…” Damien suddenly stopped, and she could _hear_ his breath stop again. “Oh.”

“What?”

“I… Rilla, I think… I made a mistake.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Arum.” Damien breathed in, and she knew he was feeling the sound of the name travel down his throat. “I… I… I…”

“Damien, what happened?”

“He said he was leaving.”

“ _What_?”

“I… I… I didn’t think, and I was so worried and, and, and so mad, and I thought… oh Rilla! I- “

"What did you say?"

"I..." his breath were starting to sound laborious again.

"Okay, Damien, just calm down. What did he mean by leaving?"

"I think... leaving the town."

There was an icy fire in Rilla's veins, something unbearably cold that coursed through her, stealing her breath and making the grip she had on her phone hard to hold onto.

"Where are you?"

* * *

Arum raggedly shoved the last of his books and plans in his bag. He’d tried to convince himself he didn’t need anything from the human world, but still, he had to keep some essays detailing human biology theories, and he couldn’t part with the lab tests he’d done with Rilla, her scratchy handwriting filling some of the pages with equations, observations, questions. If nothing else, he could show them to the Keep to stench her curiosity about humans and their so-called scientific methods.  
If nothing else, it would be a good occasion to make fun of the idea that Arum could ever get along with so close-minded people. He didn’t really want to laugh right then but surely this would appear humorous soon enough, once he stopped feeling like a flayed open sprout, his sap dragged out of him by the slow, irresistible pull of still waters.

Despite the memories Arum decided would be wasteful to part with, he completed his bag in a surprisingly short time. But in the end, it was only half full and his room was almost as empty as it had been when he’d first put feet in it, trying to see the emptiness as space for his new life. His human life had been a void he’d traveled alone, as always. He only ever had the Keep as his companion, and some trip away hadn’t changed that. He'd came alone, and that would be how he’d leave.  
He had excepted, in sme ways, for it to take longer, had even half-expected to have to defend himself against a Damien barging in in the middle of the proceedings to confront him about Rilla, or something along those lines.  
But nobody knocked at his door, nobody asked any explanation as to why he was leaving so suddenly, nobody hollered for him from the streets.  
Nobody stopped him, and really didn't that say everything?

He took the pooch he’d been keeping the swamp soil in.

Time to go home.

* * *

 

“Are you sure you don’t know where he went?”

“I- “

“It’s okay, it’s okay, we’re going to find him. You just need to think. He said he was leaving, but he can’t just vanish and be gone, he needs to take a train, or something, right?”

“That's it! A monster train!”

Rilla squinted her eyes at Angelo.

“Why would it be a _monster_ train? I'm pretty sure Arum could take a regular train”

“I don’t know! Monsters have mysterious ways!”

“… do they?”

“Angelo, don’t you have the bar to attend to?”

“I sure do! I shall research mysterious monster trains when I’m done, but for now, I am needed to help my courageous companion Caroline!”

“Sure.”

“Be sure to call me if you need anything.” Angelo called behind his shoulder as he trotted away.

“Rilla…”

“It’s okay, Damien, we’ll find him eventually.”

“It’s all my fault!”

She glanced at him critically. He looked positively awful: deep circle around his eyes, probably just as much from crying as from lack of sleep, and his hands shook slightly. She took them in her own.

“Maybe it's _a bit_ your fault: but it’s going to be okay. We're going to fix this. I just need you to _think_. Where did he go? Which way?”

“I… I don’t know.”

He must have unconsciously pulled at the fabric he’d put around his wrist, because it was almost hanging off it, revealing his mark: three flowers, now bloomed, but sickly looking, dropping sadly with faded colors. The amaryllis seemed to fare a bit better, but even it looked pale, facing down, and the honeysuckle -  _Damien’s_ realized Rilla - looked as if it was almost dying, its color nearly drained and its petals hanging by the finest of threads.

 _Oh, Damien_.

“Are you sure?”

He sniffed pitifully, his eyes, like Rilla’s, trained on the faded mark.

“Maybe… the woods?”

“What?”

“I… The first time we met, it was in the woods. Maybe… he went there.”

“Damien. He probably went to his room. Which, I don't think are in the woods.”

“No, but I met him there… twice. Maybe he… lives near them?”

Rilla looked at him. That didn’t make much sense, but it was worth some kind of try. She pointed in the general direction of the forest.

“Would you say he went this way, then?”

Damien dried his eyes to look, taking a breath and the time to think.

Rilla would have been annoyed hadn't she been so scared right then. She had a fairly clear picture of what must have happenned. Damien had the knack for losing himself in his emotions and the need to express them, and for ending up shell-shocked when it hurt the people around him. He was always careful not to vex Rilla herself, so careful in fact, that he would torture himself over it. But everyone that wasn't in the tight circle of friends he'd made around himself could suffer from his misplaced, exploding feelings, and only after would he realize a bomb didn't go off without wounding someone. She had no problem picturing Damien being so confused about his own behaviour he didn't know where up and downs where anymore, much less a certain wayward lizard.

Finally, he seemed to reach a decision if not a certainty.

“I think so.”

“Alright. Let’s try it then.”

* * *

 

Arum closed the door that the crappy dorm room he’d been allocated upon arriving the Second Citadel. He was probably supposed to advise someone about his sudden departure, but he was sure the university would be happy to see him leave anyway: that would be one monster gone, and a free-loader at that. It was certainly good publicity for them to invite a lizard boy in their precious Citadel all basic expenses paid, but that didn’t mean they were happy to have him here, and he was fully conscious of it. Besides, he didn’t care. He didn’t care about their stupid human “degree”.

Technically he could have opened a portal in the streets, but that would offer more information to the humans about monster magic than he was willing to give them. And he didn’t want any bratty fragile skinned idiot to interrupt him and somehow keep him from finding his home.

As soon as he passed the first trees into the forest, Arum felt soothed in a way he hadn’t realized he needed. Yes, those were dry, dying woods, infused with so little they gulped every drop greedily for a soil that was always hungry. Yes, they had no name, no strength behind them and stepping among them was like suddenly realizing your throat was parched and that you'd walked too long to stop in such an unfriendly territory, but it was still woods, and through the trees passed a fresh gush of air that murmured its welcome on Arum’s scales.

He breathed in the scent of dead leaves, and let his heart calm down some. Let the wind pass through him like magic softly resonating between his ears.

He advanced through the forest to find a good patch of ground: large enough that the portal wouldn’t be obstructed too much, and hidden enough that nobody would have a chance to see it from the path nearby. It wasn’t too complicated to find, and Arum took his time carefully pouring the swamp soil in a circle: if he did it right, the circle might last enough for more than one ride.  
It wasn’t very likely, and in a week at most the soil from the swamp would have mingled enough with the earth underneath that it wouldn’t hold up, but Arum was nothing if not thorough, no matter what Rilla said.

It didn’t really matter. He had no intention of coming back, but he might as well do it right. He could almost hear his Keep nag him about the fact that if he let the portal in good shape, it was because he hadn’t totally given up on his “soulmates”. Well he didn’t care, she was biased anyway, and he _didn’t_ want to go back. He just appreciated a job well done.

The last of his soil fell from his pooch, forming an almost perfect circle. Arum’s frills widened slowly. Here. Good work. Its own reward. Not everything had to be utilitarian, not matter what  _humans_ thought.

“Keep,” he began, and it felt good to finally pronounce her name out loud. Arum was really but a sprout from her swamp, and without her, he felt dried out, “create a portal to your main gate,” and then - because she would be happy to know he’d learnt something from the humans, even if it was neither architecture nor botched biology - “please.”

The portal formed, and immediately, Arum could hear her singing at him, welcoming him home. This, he needed, not stupid humans and their stupid poetry and their stupid experiment sheets and their stupid standards. He forced his frills to stay up as he stepped through the portal. The Keep would nag him enough as it was, she didn’t need to know he’d been utterly disappointed by his humans right off the bat.

Not his humans.  
Just, humans in general.

“Hello Keep.”

She responded with a few notes: was it vacation time already?

“No, but I…”

A sound came from behind him, from the portal, which was already beginning the fade. A sound of cracking branches and rapid footsteps.

“Arum! Wait!”

He whirled around to see Rilla rushing towards him. Before she could reach the portal, the image blurred, then vanished, and Rilla with it.

The Keep sang a question. She was worried. He was back already, so sad and defeated, despite having a beautiful girl trying to keep him from leaving.

“It's just a human.”

Was she really just that? Was Arum sure he didn't want to go back? She could open another portal for him, he just had to ask.

“No!”

For some reason, he'd thought something would have changed upon seeing Rilla a last time. He realized now nothing was different, he was still a missing link nobody wanted to acknowledge, some kind of parasite drinking from the roots of a young tree. Talking to her wouldn't have changed that. He'd _wanted_ to see her a last time, even knowing there was nothing to do, nothing to salvage. Now he'd seen her, and he wished he hadn't. Wished he'd stay ignorant of the truth. It was better this way.

The Keep was saying something, asking questions. He ignoread her and went to find a nook in her roots, to bury himself in sleep, burrowed against her trunk so that his heart would echo the thrum of her sap running inside of her.  
He needed to rest. Just rest and forget everything.

* * *

 

Damien was beginning to think this was all a mistake. They’d been in the woods for half an hour by now and the only think he could see were trees. Oh, beautiful, majestic, adorned with their magnificent seasonal red crowns trees, but trees all the same. There was no trace of the lizard - Arum, like an arum lily, with his violent eyes and his voice like a small landslide - Rilla was searching frantically enough she seemed to be almost more Damien than he was himself at the moment.

“Rilla?”

“What is it, Damien?”

He tried not to flinch at her annoyed tone. He knew it was because she was worried, impatient to find Arum. Arum he’d driven away with harsh words and the threat of violence.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure about what?”

She was still not looking at him, taking care not to fall as she scanned the woods around them. The night was dark, though, even more so under the trees, and it seemed unlikely they would find anything, especially a lizard boy who would use his knowledge of the forest to avoid them. To avoid _him_. Damien had done this, he'd doomed any chance they had, any chance _Rilla_ had, at meeting this boy properly.

“That… we match.”

She finally looked back.

“Damien…”

“I know you said it, and I believe you! And the flowers, but… But I hurt him, several times! And now we might not find him again, because of _me_. I  _did_ this, I hurt him, I hurt  _you_. Maybe this isn’t about me at all. Maybe you should find him and I- “

“Damien. _Stop_.”

She took his hand, the one with the mark, and Damien’s eyes drifted to the sickly flowers adorning it, a feeling of dread pooling in his gut. He’d made his amaryllis suffer, and he was doing the same to that other flower, too, to the Arum Lily, to _Arum_ – a lizard that had been friendly to him and that he’d shown only distrust and disgust to.

“Damien. Look at me.”

Rilla looked tired, but in her eyes burnt a fire Damien recognized well, a determination he’d always admired, even before they’d been together. A fire that warmed his freezing hands and kept him going even when his breaths grew short, even when his heart went haywire and it felt like it would jump out of his chest, letting him gasping and stumbling towards his death while he desperately tried to catch up. He couldn’t lose her, he _couldn’t_ , she was his everything, and Arum… Arum… Arum was a flower on his wrist, blooming and gowing with its roots planted deep in his heart, but what did it mean? What was he supposed to give up to get this?

“Stop thinking about your mark. Tell me about the first time you met Arum.”

They exchanged a long stare, and he tried to think, to put into words that day, that seemed both so long ago and so recent.

“I was… in the woods. I was trying to find the poem, the phrasing to…  to propose.” Damien looked on fearfully as her eyes widened an instant, but she said nothing, nodding for Damien to continue. “I think he heard me: he was in a tree, working on the design for a house. It was, a beautiful house, made for both humans and monsters, I think. He had those violet eyes, and I… I thought they looked… warm, and soft, like the petal of a flower in the sun. They looked… human, somehow, and- And he called me… honeysuckle.”

He remembered the way the word had bounced around in that mouth, as if it was tumbling down a rocky riverbed.

“How did it feel?”

Damien swallowed heavily, trying to put it into word, the sudden, warm feeling he had only noticed once it’d been gone.

“It felt as if… once he’d finished that house… I’d be happy to live in it.”

It suddenly felt a bit much, and he had to avert his eyes, not to look into Rilla’s, drinking him in like she was searching deep inside his soul. She was welcome to it, always, but it did make Damien’s breathing a bit harder.

“There’s… there was one line in that poem. I liked it, I thought it was lovely, but it didn’t feel right after that. I had to take it out, because it reminded me of him.”

He had to take a deep breath after that admission, the sentence still embedded deep in his brain: _There are so many flowers in the world, and yet, I found_ you.

“It’s okay, Damien. It’s okay.”

Damien looked back at her, and she was smiling, small and fond.

“It’s good. It seems you like him, right?”

“I…”

Rilla cupped his cheek, gently.

“Damien. I love you, and I know you love me. And we match, but _I_ wouldn’t care if we didn’t, because I’d _still_ _love_ you. So, it doesn’t really matter whether or not you and Arum match, or whether _me_ and Arum match. Because if you feel like you feel, and I feel like I feel, and, if _Arum_ feels the same, then who cares that we match or not? We _love_ each other. I’d take that over our soul marks any day.

Damien couldn’t help the smile that slowly spread on his face, feeling it settling in his wrist as well, soothing the uneasiness that had taken over his skin there for several weeks. He wasn't sure, he couldn't be, not when they didn't even know they'd find Arum again, but Rilla: he _knew_ , he _knew he loved her_. And she was right, with no marks, he'd still love her, just... because she was Rilla. He bent down to kiss those soft silky lips.

“Keep” a rocky voice suddenly rose in the air, faint but audible at Damien’s left. Rilla’s head immediately turned toward the sound.

“Arum?”

“Create a portal to your main gate, please.”

“It’s Arum!” Rilla was already running towards the sound of his voice, Damien behind her, unbalanced and struggling to catch up.

They reached a very small clearing, in the middle of which stood some kind of wavy, shiny circle of light slowly spinning around Arum, who seemed to be… somewhere else, in a chamber of some sort, made out of green, woody walls.

“Arum! Wait!” He turned around at the sound, his frills flaring as he saw Rilla advancing toward him.

And then, he vanished.

“Arum!”

But there was nothing left. Just the two of them, in the middle of the forest, surrounded by dark, scrawny looking trees: scrubs compared to the vision of Arum on the other side of this… door in the very fabric of the universe.

 

 

Rilla was the first to break the silence.

“That was… monster magic.”

Damien said nothing, still unable to fully comprehend what he’d just saw, what it meant.

“Okay, so if he can get out, he can probably come back, right? I mean, Arum’s a scientist, of sorts, he wouldn’t like unreliable experiences…” She didn’t sound so sure of herself, but there was this air of determination around her. “He’s going to come back. Maybe it takes a bit of preparation, but he’ll try to come back, so we can wait.”

“Rilla… he said- “

“I’m not just leaving! What if we come back and he’s gone? I don’t… we can’t leave.”

“This is not what I’m suggesting, but Rilla, I don’t think he will come back that easily. I wasn’t... I don't think he'll want to come back unless he has a good reason. If we want to see him, we might have to... find him."

“But we don’t know where he is! I mean I think he went home, but I don’t know where _that_ is, or, how to get there.”

“Rilla.”

“And I should have stopped him, I should have heard him earlier, I…”

“Rilla. It's not your fault.”

She took a breath.

“Right.”

“You’re a brilliant scientist. You said it yourself: there might be a way to use the same passage. We just need to figure out how.”

She looked at him, nodding along, taking deep breaths like she always told Damien to.

“Right. Figuring it out. We can do this.”

She bit her lips, scanning the dark clearing as if to search for a clue in the dark. Damien wanted to take her into his arms, so she wouldn’t catch the chilly air, but he was afraid that would break her concentration. He knew there was little chance he could figure this out himself, but Rilla... when it came to solving puzzles and understanding the world around her, she could move around mountains.

“He said something, didn’t he? He said something about his Keep.”

“Keep, as in a castle?”

“I don’t think so… Arum mentioned her when we were working together. I think it’s his foster mom? or, something like that.” Her frowned deepened and she started muttering to herself. “But he said… “Create a portal to your main gate”; “Keep, create a portal to your main gate”.”

“Rilla?”

At her feet, a circle had started glowing, a faint, feeble blue. It was at the exact same place that Arum had stood a few instants earlier.

“Oh! This is working! Keep! Create a portal to your main gate” The circle on the ground shone a tad brighter, but it still had nothing in common with the shift in reality they’d seen earlier, “Please?”

Still nothing.

She bit her lips.

“Why isn’t this working? There must be something. Something about the Keep? But how? “Your main gate”; “main gate”.” Her voice suddenly found its usual volume. “His Keep is the Keep!”

"Wha-"

“ _His Keep_ is _the Keep,_ the _physical_ Keep: it’s his house, but it’s- _she’s_ sentient… and she can create portals. But… not everywhere, otherwise he wouldn’t have needed to get out there.”

She quickly took out her phone, using its light to examine the faint luminous circle at her feet.

“It looks like… dirt? Why dirt? Wait. No. No, that’s not the right question. _What is it for_? Is it to make a link? To... the Keep, maybe? I guess if it’s a house, you can’t really have it on the phone.” She got up again, her eyes still fixated on the ground. Damien only looked and listened, not daring to interrupt. “But then if we have the link, what’s the problem? We can speak to the Keep, and she’s sentient… so maybe, she wants something? She’s Arum’s mom…”

Rilla’s head suddenly snapped up.

“ _Oh_! She’s his _mom_. Damien, come over here.”

He took the hand she was extending to him, coming to stand with her at the edge of the circle.

“Did you… figure it out?”

“I think so. Arum had some kind of dirt… maybe something from home, so he could make contact with the Keep. And, so can we, maybe… less easily, but it works, kind of.” She turned back towards the circle. “But she’s sentient, and she raised him. She looks out for him: I think we need to introduce ourselves so she lets us in.”

Damien looked at her, color high on his cheek, which made her chuckle a bit.

“Right. I guess you never had to do that.” She pressed his hand. “It’s going to be fine.”

“Are you sure it’s going to work?”

She sobered up.

“Well, I guess we’ll see.” She swallowed once, “Hello, um… Madame Keep, my name is Amaryllis and I am a friend of Arum. We met during biology class, and we became friends. I would like to see him again, because I think- I know I’d miss him if I didn't have the chance to. I really like him, and I'm afraid he doesn't want to come back.”

The circle glowed brighter than it had, and a faint shimmer started to appear. Damien looked at it, slack-jawed, until Rilla squeezed his hand again, reminding him he still had to do his part.

“Right. Lady Keep. I…” He swallowed. “I made… some mistakes, I think, and I don’t know how to repay them yet. I was confused, and scared and, I was unfair to your son.” He took a breath, encouraged by Rilla, “But um- I regret those mistakes, and I wish I can repair them. I was afraid of knowing your son, but _now_ , I want to get to know him better. I think we should speak because as soon as I met him, I knew… I knew he was one of the _flowers I had to find_ ”

As the last words escaped him, tumbling out of his mouth by themselves, the shimmer in front of them suddenly intensified, until there was before them some sort of disk, hovering in front of them, its surface like a shifty, liquid, blue mirror.

Rilla threw a quick glance Damien’s way.

“Keep, would you lead us to Arum? Please?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think?
> 
> I feel like maybe this will get a small epilogue, but I already almost cut this chapter in half so we needed to end this here. And we'll see what happens.
> 
> I think I should have the time to finish this by the 18th. But so far I've always thought I'd have more time for the next chapter, and it has never been true, so we'll see...


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of crying. Apologies. Cuddles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is late (real life really kicked me guys, and then well, I got a good news but it was a busy good news so...) and not that edited but honestly I've looked at this way too much. I had half of that chapter written when I published chapter 6 tbh but I was just not happy with it, which is why we ended up with a tired tolkienish multi-ending. I hope you like it and that it's not too underwhelming :')

Rilla held her breath as the shifting surface in front of her rippled and tore itself open to revel what looked like a mix between a workshop and a messy teenager room (actually not too far from what Mark and Talfryn room looked like). All the walls were wooden, and there weren’t any windows, but a large part of the wall on her left was thin enough she could she the dark shape of a swamp, where small plants were breaking the surface to present their petals to the sky.

Arum was tucked into a nook in the wall, his eyes closed and his frills slowly moving with the rhythm of his breathing. His skin shone faintly with the same feeble, radiating light that stuck to the walls and the flower, a soft, yellow hue that made the whole scene look like a dream.

She looked at Damien. His eyes were fixated on Arum, wide and full of something akin to fear. Gently, she squeezed his hands and pulled him along as she took a step toward the sleeping lizard.

“Can we touch him?” she whispered, half to herself, half to ask permission to the Keep. She remembered all too well how Arum had reacted the last time she’d tried.

A voice rang, singing a wordless song, and the walls began to move, just enough to shake Arum where he laid.

He groaned something unintelligible, trying to hide his face in his neck, and Rilla had to smile. Who knew giant lizard monster boys could be cute?

Another trill responded to Arum’s mumbled protest, more insistent, and the wall behind him seemed to pulse forward, pushing him just enough that he could barely hang on to his nook before falling.

“Fine! I’m up! What do you want?!”

He opened his eyes suddenly, his head snapped up from its resting position, but before he could work himself up further,

 his eyes fell on the two humans before him, and he stopped, shocked silent, in the middle of his movement.

“Hi,” finally said Rilla, when the silence began to stretch too much, “sorry for barging in.”

This seemed to snap Arum out of it.

“You can’t _be_ here.”

“Your mom let us in.”

The song rang out again, and Rilla still couldn’t understand any of it, but it seemed to convey feelings, and it definitely felt like the Keep was arguing for her.

“ _She’s not my mom_.” A few notes. “Because it’s a ridiculous human that is entirely inappropriate!”

He turned back towards Rilla - carefully no looking Damien’s direction, she noted.

“ _Why_ are you here, then?”

His two sets of arms were crossed and his tail was warped around his knees for good measure: a tight ball of annoyed lizardry refusal.  
Rilla had to be careful about her next words if she didn’t want to be thrown out of whatever this place was.

“I came to apologize.”

Both Rilla and Arum turned toward Damien. He was trembling a bit, and his eyes, despite being set in Arum’s, looked scared more than determined, but he held the lizard’s gaze.

“I have been prejudiced and mean to you, because I was confused and scared. _And that’s not an excuse!_ But I wanted you to know, that I’m sorry, and I hope we can… get to know each other? Maybe? If you want to, that is.” He swallowed, his hands tightly joined together, gripping his own skin so hard Rilla was surprised he hadn’t drawn blood yet.

Arum didn’t respond, eyes unblinking, but Rilla could see his frills flaring high, and the tightness in his hands. He didn’t seem especially happy or satisfied with Damien’s response.

“What do you want then? For me to forgive you?” The tone was harsh, but the words seemed to cost him, his eyes flickering briefly to Rilla. “I’m a monster, I don’t care about pesky human feelings.”

He looked away, to the swamp outside, but the way his frills jittered and trembled, it was obvious he was still paying close attention to them.

“Damien,” Rilla said, staring meaningfully at Arum, “you should show him your mark.”

His frills jumped a fraction, a tiny movement she probably would have missed hadn't she been looking at him so intently.

“What?”

“Show him.”

Hesitantly, Damien advanced his wrist towards Arum, glancing anxiously at the lizard as he offered his limbs to him. On it, his mark was shining softly, the colors of the flowers burning a bit brighter, even though Rilla could see they were still looking a bit sick. Arum threw a glare at Rilla, but glanced at the wrist, his eyes not leaving it afterward as his frills fluttered and abated slightly. Slowly, as if it was almost unconscious, one of his hands detached itself from his body and he traced, so light that Rilla wouldn’t have known it was touching Damien’s skin were it not for his sharp intake of breath.

“It’s an amaryllis, a honeysuckle and an arum lily.” Said Damien softly, his eyes glued to Arum’s fingers barely grazing his skin.

The words seemed to draw Arum out of his trance, and he snatched his hand back, looking venomously at Damien as if he’d brought him in some kind of trap. And there he was again, his arms tightly wound around his torso.

“So what? Monsters don’t have soulmates.” He spat, but Rilla could see his eyes were drawn back toward the mark “I thought humans knew that.”

“Arum, come _on_. I know you…”

“I’m not some toy to play with!”

His eyes snapped back to her, and his frills flared angrily over his head.

 “What? Nobody believes that.”

“But no human wants to actually want to have a monster for soulmate, do they?” – Out the corner of her eye, Rilla could see Damien flinch at the words – “So is it just some fun for you two before you get back to being _real_ soulmates?”

“ _No!”_

Arum jumped slightly. Damien looked on the verge of tears, and he was still trembling, a tremor that traveled in his voice, but he went on regardless, his eyes set deep in Arum’s.

“Rilla would never do such a thing! And me neither, though I would understand if you doubted my word.” He waved his marked wrist towards him in a jerky motion. “She’s too good for that, and she’s kind and brilliant and… and funny! And I know she’s too good for me!” Rilla frowned, ready to interrupt, but he forged on, his eyes plunged into Arum’s, who seemed unable to look away. “My mark… I always thought she’d think I wasn’t good enough, or that she might get hurt because of me. I thought meeting my _other_ soulmate meant I’d lost her, and it would be _my fault_.”

“Damien-“He shook his head, taking another big gulp of air before resuming.

“So, meeting you… I thought it meant I’d loose Rilla, and I can’t- I can’t- “

Rilla took his hand, the other still extended toward a frozen Arum.

“Damien, breathe.”

The sound of him rushing air into his lungs sounded painful. But he pressed on.

“I can’t lose Rilla, but” – his eyes strayed toward Rilla an instant – “that’s not all of it. When I met you in the wood, almost before I saw you, I knew who you were. _I knew_.”

“ _What_?”

Arum’s frills were completely flat, and he looked almost like he had that last time in the lab. Scared. Hurt.

“I know. I _know_. I’m sorry. I was-“For the first time, Damien averted his eyes “I was a coward. You said it yourself. Monsters don’t have soulmates, right? I didn’t think you would care… I thought I’d lose Rilla and you wouldn’t care because monster don’t have soulmates and I- I should have _tried_ , I should have but…”

His tears were finally spilling over his face, and Rilla could see them even as he looked away. Her own throat was tight. She had barely had time to process the fact that Damien had met Arum before her, that he’d had all the time in the world to worry and obsess over it, thinking he lose not only her, but only the second flower to bloom on his wrist.

“Monsters don’t have soulmates. Or soulmarks,” finally said Arum, looking at Damien as he wiped his tears. He was still wrapped all around himself, his arms and his tail a barrage against the both of them. “They see it as a strain on their freedom. Something ridiculous and shameful. It always made an outcast amongst my own kind.”

He looked away, slowly uncrossing both set of arms and opening the lapels of his dressing gown. Rilla was immediately distracted by his second set of pectorals before realizing what he was actually showing them. Under the line of his flat muscles, swirled a sentence written in an elegant cursive she was very familiar with.

It read “ _There are so many flowers in the world, and yet, I found_ you” and she heard Damien’s breath catch behind her.

“Arum…”

“I can also see colors, now,” he muttered, closing his garment with a jerky movement of his arm, “colors most people with my biology shouldn’t be able to see.”

“Oh. I can smell flowers.” Arum looked at her. “I have amnosia. It prevents you from smelling, well, pretty much anything… but since last time, I can smell flowers, specifically, three types of flowers”

“I see.”

Silence fell again, the three of them not quite daring to look one another in the eyes.

Something like joy was thrumming in Rilla’s belly. They’d made it. Managed to find one another and to clear the muddy waters they’d all been standing in. Nothing was quite fixed yet, but Damien didn’t look like he was getting ready to run away anymore, and while Arum had closed the lapels of his nightgown again, his arms weren’t crossed anymore, even if his tail was still wrapped around his ankle in what seemed to be a self-reassurance move.

None of them seemed inclined to make any kind, though, and when everyone had stayed silent and motionless for almost a minute, Rilla decided she had to make the first move.

Slowly – in the hopes that Arum wouldn’t spook if she telegraphed her moves - she walked to his nook and sat herself besides him.

“Can I?” she asked quietly, her hand close to his. He looked at her, his frills agitated by little tics that probably meant he was just as nervous as she felt, and he nodded slightly, a tiny dip of his head, so small she barely caught it.

His skin was cool under hers, like a dry river, but it sent some kind of electrifying warmth up her arm, and her shiver wasn’t one of cold. She only looked at those two hands, trembling slightly, but she could feel the burning stare of Damien across the room.

When Arum didn’t draw back after several, endless seconds, she slowly moved her fingers over the harder edges of his articulations, feeling where his scales shifted and aligned with one another under her touch. Slowly, her hand climbed up his arm, reaching the softer divot in the inside of his elbow. Arum shivered but didn’t move, his eyes trained on hers and his frills up in the air, trembling in rhythm with the soft hisses that escaped him as his breath caught and rushed out of his throat in turns.

She had almost reached Arum’s shoulder by now, and she could see his jaw working a few inches away. She wondered again how he would react if she pressed her mouth there, feeling the smooth, cool skin under her lips. But while he was putting up with her slowly mapping out his arm, he still looked nervous, on edge.

Instead, she took back his hand and brought it close to her face, addressing Arum a silent question with her eyes. He nodded again, and she deposited a featherlight kiss on his hand, pressing just long enough to feel the smooth, cool scales against her lips.

Across the room, Damien made a small sound, and Arum jumped slightly, his eyes finally breaking away from Rilla’s.

“Damien” The name rolled on his tongue like stones on dry leaves, “Damien, come here.”

Hesitantly, Damien obeyed, approaching with trembling limbs and seating himself slowly, as if he was afraid the wood under him would suddenly disappear. His hand stood only millimeters away from Arum’s and he looked at him like a particularly dangerous wonder of nature.

“I’m really sorry.” He said, in a tight voice, turning imploring eyes towards Arum, and Rilla had to bite her lips. His bright eyes and his trembling lips made him look vulnerable, overwhelmed at the vision before him. Now that the situation didn’t necessitate immediate mending, Rilla could appreciate his fearful wonder, the way he anxiously offered himself to both her and Arum.

The lizard couldn’t have been entirely unaffected either, and he didn’t make Damien wait before taking his hand in his own. Damien looked on in wonder, his eyes filled with unshed tears, and his other hand coming to rest atop Arum’s, locking it in their embrace.

“Can we stay, for a bit?” Rilla asked, one of Arum’s other hands firmly trapped in hers.

He looked at her, looking hesitant, if anything.

“Alright. We can stay.”

Rilla smiled and leaned against his side, wrapping his arm around hers. He smelled faintly of flowers, honeysuckle maybe.

“Everything will be fine, I promise.”

Neither boy replied, but Arum wrapped his other arm around her, and she slowly closed her eyes, feeling as though they were okay. They’d fixed it. Everything would be alright.

* * *

Humans were warm, Arum thought. Both Damien and Rilla around him felt hotter than any blanket the Second Citadel’s administrators had tried to pawn off to him. It felt nice, Arum didn’t _need_ to be extremely warm, but he did appreciate the heat, and he’d rarely had a better occasion to experience it. If this was part of having two human soulmates, then it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.  
Not at all, in fact.

The Keep sang a questioning tune, and Arum jumped slightly, jostling both humans. Rilla didn’t seem bothered but Damien’s eyes blinked towards him, open and still slightly wet, the sight giving Arum pause for an instant. He looked like a scarred little animal, ready to offer himself to Arum’s dull claws.

The Keep interrupted his derailing thoughts by another question.

“What? No! They’ll go back to the Citadel.”

They couldn’t, argued the Keep, the portal wouldn’t hold up long enough for them to go through.

Arum grumbled something under his breath. Of course they would strain the portal enough that it would stop being usable.  
But they’d done it to chase back after him, countered a voice in his head, sounding suspiciously like the Keep, and he forced his frills not to flutter in pleasure at the thought.

“Well, make them a room, then!”

The Keep sang and Arum nearly fell out of his nook when it extended inwards, becoming more than large enough for two humans and a lizard.

Arum felt his frills flare up defensively, and Damien next to him had taken a worrying shade of red.

“Absolutely not!”

The Keep sang again, and the access to his room merged to the wall.

“Keep! Stop this!”

Rilla moved under his right arms, her hand grazing Arum’s torso lightly as she moved a bit out of his hold.

“It’s fine, Arum. We can just sleep on the floor or on your side. I’m tired, we’ll go back to the Citadel tomorrow.”

“You’re not sleeping on the floor!”

She exchanged a look with Damien, who now looked as red as a tomato.

“Are you okay if we sleep in your bed, then?”

He crossed he crossed the two arms that weren’t occupied by the humans around him, suddenly feeling as if he needed to put some kind of barrier.

“It’s… fine” He grumbled, unable to look at either of them.

“Are you _sure_?” insisted Rilla, pressing the hand she still had in her grasp. Her warmth felt like a furnace around his comparatively cool skin.

“I said it’s fine!” but it did feel better that she’d bothered to make sure.

“Damien, are _you_ okay with that?”

Arum turned his head towards Damien – his honeysuckle, his mind supplied, and the proprietary thought sent another wave of warmth through him – but the human was looking down, his hands back around himself and trembling a bit.

“Damien?” Rilla asked again, and she sounded less confident all of a sudden.

“It’s fine,” he finally pushed out, and Arum certainly hadn’t become an expert in human expression patterns, but this didn’t seem like an entirely honest answer.

“Damien…”

“I just think it’s maybe a bit fast, is all… I still don’t know- I don’t know.”

“Damien…” Rilla seemed a bit out of sort, throwing a rapid glance Arum’s way “of course it’s a little bit fast, but it feels right, doesn’t it? I mean, if it’s really an issue, we can talk about this but…”

“I said it’s fine!”

“Damien,” - both human turned toward him, and Arum savored the way the word erupted in his mouth, like a rapidly blooming flower – “Honeysuckle. It’s true that I was… hurt with the way our previous encounters went.” -Damien looked away, and tears were shining in his eyes again, but Arum took the liberty to slowly extend his hand his way. As delicately as he could, he slipped his fingers between Damien’s warm, fragile ones, drawing a shiver out of him – “But you apologized. You told me you wanted to know me better, and I believed you. Are you telling me this was a lie?”

“No!” Damien’s head flew up, his eyes set with a determined stare.

“Then, would you care to tell me what’s bothering you?”

The human’s cheeks colored again, and Arum wasn’t sure if it was in embarrassed or anger at being trapped.

“It’s just a lot, and… and I don’t want to impose on you, I-“

“You’re scared.”

“No! I…” Damien deflated. “Yes.”

“Oh, _Damien_ -“

“Then I understand. And if you want to go back home tonight, I won’t be sad or mad.” He passed a thumb Damien’s fingers like he would over the fragile petal of a flower. “But I would appreciate it if you stayed.”

Damien visibly swallowed, but he was looking back directly at Arum this time, instead of averting his eyes.

“Alright. I’ll stay.”

Arum felt his frills slowly flare up and had to repress the urge to purr deep in his throat, trying instead to smile in a human fashion, making the edges his lips go up and crinkling his eyes like he saw them do all the time. He wasn’t sure the result was true to form but it was probably not as horrifying as it might have been, because Damien smiled back, a timid, small turn of the lip that somehow brightened his whole face.  
Arum could see why it was a preferred method of expression among humans. _He_ certainly wouldn’t mind seeing this sight again.

Slowly, with the full knowledge that he was trying his luck, he pulled on Damien’s hand, bringing it closer to him until the human had no choice but to follow. He still looked a bit wary, but didn’t protest or resist as Arum reeled him in, all the way until he could close his other arm around the boy. Damien made a small sound as his head rested on Arum’s chest.

He was warm, even warmer than Rilla had been, and the words on Arum’s skin felt like molten lava, so hot it was almost too much, but too addictive a feeling to give up. Damien seemed to feel the same way - if the gasp he let out, and the grip attaching itself to Arum’s hip was to be trusted.

Rilla was back on Arum’s side and he was finally entirely surrounded by them both, in a cocoon of warmth and comfort, a feeling of love and security he couldn’t trace back to anything he’d ever known. He felt like a tree, his roots solidly planted in the ground, his leaves caressed by the sun. A sound started to resonate in his chest, and he couldn’t have stopped the purring if he tried, born out of the best feeling he’d ever felt. This is what he’d been longing for, what he’d thought having a soulmate, having _soulmates_ meant and he was helpless to do anything but surrender himself to it.

“Okay?” Murmured Rilla on his left, and he opened eyes he wasn’t sure he’d closed, on a world of color hidden away in dark, ebony curls. She was caressing Damien’s cheek, turning his head towards her.

“Okay” Damien whispered back, the sound barely audible under Arum’s own low purr, and Rilla bent down over Arum to press her mouth to the side of his head.

It felt warm.

* * *

Damien woke up slowly, enclosed between the comforting warmth of two bodies around him. In his arms, her head half resting against his chest, slept Rilla, her breath calm and her face covered by a mass of dark curls. I was a reassuring, familiar sight, an anchor for Damien as he gradually took stock of where he was.

Along his own arm around Rilla, was one of Arum’s limbs, his clawed hand carefully folded so the pointed tips of his fingers wouldn’t accidentally graze either human in their sleep. The lizard was a long, hard line against his back, like a scaly, smooth weighted blanket, and he could feel another arm curled around him, its closed fist resting close to his heart.

This was how it felt, then, to complete his soul mark. Not like a dizzying siphon of anxiety and fear, but a reassuring warmth all around him, an embrace that grounded him and pillowed his fears all at once. Presented like that, it didn’t feel scary, or daunting. It simply felt right. As long as he got to keep Rilla and sail alongside her towards this new side of their life, towards _Arum_ , he would be fine, safe, enclosed in arms that for all they were frail, felt stronger than his owns.

Gently, as to not disturb his soulmate – _soulmates_ , _both of them_ : that was still a mind-blowing concept – he tried running a finger along the hand resting next to his, feeling the cool, smooth skin. It shivered under his touch, a rippling movement of scales, like a disturbed river, that Damien felt all around him as it reverberated over all of Arum’s body.

“Honeysuckle?” The sound rumbled behind him and traveled through his whole body, sending tingles of warmth through his wrist and his heart. “Are you awake?”

Damien’s first instinct was to tense up, but the arms around him didn’t tighten, the calm around him didn’t break. Arum didn’t even press him for a reaction as he slowly relaxed back into the embrace, into the warmth all around him.

“Arum,” he finally felt steady enough to say “Good morning.”

A featherlight touch on his hand, and he opened his fist for Arum to thread his fingers in-between his.

“Good morning” Arum’s voice was a rumble, the words barely decipherable in the low, rocky hum, almost like the purr of a cat if it were echoing in an underground cavern. Damien could only interpret it as an expression of bone-deep contentment, and the way the mass behind him slowly seemed to melt in a warm, scaly blanket only comforted this impression. It felt oddly similar to getting Rilla to relax after a long day, and there was a sense of pride at making Arum happy.

“Arum?” He couldn’t see the lizard, so he kept his eyes on what he could see of Rilla’s face beneath the bangs across her face.

The purring sound behind him intensified, making him flush in pleased embarrassment before Arum cleared his throat to respond.

“What is it, Honeysuckle?”

_Honeysuckle_. The name seeped into him, a bit easier every time Damien heard it.

“Thank you for… letting us- for accepting my apology.”

“Damien…” Arum already sounded like Rilla when she thought he was blaming himself for something, Damien realized “how did you find the Keep?”

“I- what?”

“You managed to find _me_ and to travel to the Keep, in a forest, despite the fact that humans aren’t supposed to know monster magic.”

“I mean, I- I don’t know. I just- Well, we didn’t know where to find you, so I just sort of thought… you might be in the woods? And then Rilla… I don’t know- I didn’t think, but-“

“But you found me.”

Arum’s thumb smoothed over Damien’s, and he could only marvel at how calming that simple gesture was.

“Monsters don’t believe in soulmates. They think it’s a restrain on free will and they can’t accept it as anything that would be beneficial. They consider human soulmates with disdain and think of pairs as simpletons that let themselves be trapped by an alluring, unrealistic ideal.”

Oh. He had said something about being rejected by monsters, hadn’t he? Damien tried to press his hand, to offer him comfort like Rilla did when there was nothing much to say.

“There are some theories, however, that magic is not, as we tend to believe, inherently a thing of monsters. Some have said that soulmates are the way humans express magic is through that bond.”

What?

“It’s only a theory of course. And to believe _humans_ would be able to yield any kind of magic.” Arum huffed in a haughty way, his breath tickling Damien’s hair as it blew past him. “But then you did manage to find me, without reason or logic. I find that… interesting.”

There was so much in that last word. A feeling, that traveled from Damien’s head to his toes, from his wrist to his heart, from Arum to him.

“I’m glad we did. Find you, I mean.”

Arum let out a slow breath, and Damien felt him crowd even closer behind him, until a long, scaly head found the slope of his neck and rested itself there gently. Arum was surprisingly light, and Damien could feel the line of his mouth pressing against his skin, like an unconscious, tight-lipped kiss. It felt almost overly intimate, like being entirely encompassed in Arum’s embrace.  
When he spoke, his breath brushed over Damien’s ear and resonated directly in his whole being.

“Me too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And End <3
> 
> Please do scream at me. I probably will be busy in the next few days so I'm not sure I'll get to check the comments then (and I haven't responded to a few lately) but they do always warm my heart.
> 
> I have a lot of one shot that needs editing, and half finished shorts that I'll be publishing (I'll try to remember to publish around once a week) and then I'll have more time to pick up another long/ semi-long fic (probably TMA or Bright Sessions) on a round two months? I think? You can follow me on twitter at oneunicornaway if you want the updates, and also I will talk more and more about my original project if that interests you.
> 
> Alright, Imma go to sleep now. Toodles <3


End file.
